【OHI】Louis Pouzin interview selection

Brought message systems to American colleagues.BZ: I believe like, you know, what you also bring some interesting [sic] to them. Previously, you know, we do not know how French people are thinking and finally, we have a colleague here. So, what, what things you think you bring to Americans, your American colleagues? LP: I think practical, what I brought at that time there was no message...

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Brought message systems to American colleagues.

BZ: I believe like, you know, what you also bring some interesting [sic] to them. Previously, you know, we do not know how French people are thinking and finally, we have a colleague here. So, what, what things you think you bring to Americans, your American colleagues?

LP: I think practical, what I brought at that time there was no message systems. So, when I get back to dorm, I developed a manageable way of working, and while writing a piece of paper that my secretary would be slipping into various offices, and I wasn't asking many people do this and that time, uh. Let's say, once every few days I would call them to find out what the, what the progress was and, and we eventually giving them more work and so on. So it was a way of working which was not customary in France at the moment. A, it was a, in a way, more sense of hierarchical relationship, which is not, not effective. It's much better to develop some of the friendly relationship, knowing that were your boss, you may discuss your ideas. You ask them what they think, and so on. Well, sometimes even I was working into another office, and I look at the guy in, in the room see, uh, I'll make you a, yeah. I want to explain things, if you don't understand, that’s okay; don't be scared that afterwards, because by, by just making myself, forcing myself into explaining what I want to do, I could do it much better, uh, if there is an audience.

Built Open-Root

BZ: So, 2012 and you build Open-Root. Oh, yeah, yeah, so, you know, that something like a new brand new, and a lot of people are saying, “hey, you know, uh, maybe, you know, most people were thinking-- I should think about my retirement line, instead, like, you built this Open-Root. How do, how do, you know, how do you find the energy, find to get the time and to do something new, even like quite recently, like Open-Root?

LP: Uh, the energy is much more available than [for] building CYCLADES. And, so, that's, that's why I could do it because I’m not too old for devoting the same amount of energy as I was doing this year, and it was holding (coughs). I know so I didn't have the means to build a team like I did in CYCLADES. So it was a new generation. So, why did I do that? When I started to, well, first day, sometimes I went to, teaching in a business school, South of France, sociality police. I won't be a little bit disconnected from what happened, what was happening in the networking, in France at the moment, but it only lasted two years, because then, what happened is that, again, I received a phone call from a man who I knew. He had been secretary general in area, but he was a diplomat, part of the foreign ministry, is quote them, and, so he had been nominated, ambassador, to WSIS, which you know is, WSIS, and then, so he had meetings discussing about how to play out some kind of conventions of, uh I, perhaps, perhaps holdings, whatever, you know, something to, put some wonder and the development of computer networks. And he got me to you, you know, help them, in the, in the discussions in the, among the valued diplomats. He needed some kind of help, you know, in determining what we should do and not do. So, I became a engaged with him, in the values meetings we had with the values delegates, from various countries around WSIS. And, of course, when the, uh, so the discussion going, I say so what, what are the big, what are the sore point, and the good points in the present situation, while the sore points is that the Americans had taken over the whole ARPANET. It had become the internet in 1983, using the technical things we had developed and I had not thought at the time, uh, what to do about that. But once we were at the international level, I said, why are the Americans so powerful? One reason is that this domain name system, DNS, which is nothing. but see if you like doing now, the telephone directory is also were quite complicated, so, see, why do they have this power? But the power they have, they've created, without any, without any support, at the international level, they have created the world monopoly on that, world monopoly as, uh, place to call. It's not… if it's abusive, it is not allowed in the implementation of the European community. We should find that, why a monopoly? And, by looking at a technical matter, they say, why aren’t we gonna have second DNS? Of course, it's not something people would accept quietly, because anything which is a monopoly is in a way simpler for people, to live with. We don't have to ask questions.

So, we started to put questions, and said, well, we could have several registries, several DNS and so on. Okay, and now after making a few years of propaganda for that nothing happened, of course. That's why we decided to create a company. Unless we have a company, commercial [connection??] company, we will not be, we will not progress in that development because, uh nobody would stop the looting the first stuff, you know. That's why we created Open-Root.

Do not rely on others, demand yourself.

BZ: Is there any special message electric tell them or remind them about the birth of the internet? (LP: There's…) Yeah, you know, the starting, you know, starting with the birth of the internet, of the start of the internet, you know, 50 years later, um 100 years later, the young people will not understand, like how the internet started, you know. They will be thinking that's just like the air, they breathe in, that's part of their life. So, what kind of message you like to deliver to the younger generations; like that?

LP: Well, the message is that today if you don't understand computing, technically, you cannot be an engineer in that field, ok. Now you may be able to understand implications like, the, the application which, physical, the people who have to train and so on, they can understand a lot of aspects of the business, but when they hire some time to make decisions, about things which contains some, let’s say, not necessarily a critical, I mean, some, yes or no decision, about subcomponents of the system. They have no experience in engineering or business. While they will have no way to decide, and they will very well rely on consulting people, which are not necessarily more experts in that uh, and, in the end, they will lose control (BZ: Yeah), and threw it out of things we made on the useful, which may not work very well; that's common, you know.