Metcalfe's Law only kicks into high gear when everyone is capable of joining the same network. If there are three or four proprietary networks with limited and expensive communications between them, growth is hobbled.
Or, to take another tack, how much has access to clean water done for you? How much has access to a house that isn't burgled done for you?
Just because you personally never received a check doesn't mean the government hasn't given you benefit.
Why do you think other networks wouldn't have grown global?
> If there are three or four proprietary networks with limited and expensive communications between them, growth is hobbled.
I agree, and there was tremendous pressure to interconnect them. The "inter" part of internet is the result of that, it's why it's called the internet rather than Arpanet. Numerous packet switching networks were developed in the 1960s, not just Arpanet.
Because privately-run networks have to turn a profit by the end of the fiscal year, if not sooner. It's too easy for a company to engage in profit-seeking behavior which harms long-term growth, like demanding fees to interoperate with it. The core Internet protocol suite, OTOH, is completely specified by RFCs which are free to read and implement.
Local and federal governments need developers to write software and will use contractors, but that's not really a subsidy.
The NSF will occasionally fund research that may or may not use software. For example, I see that the Sage math software has a few grants listed:
http://www.sagemath.org/development-ack.html
I don't know that any of this really supports the grandparent's comment, though. McDonald's is closer to being government-subsidized than anything in the software industry.
Consider also that the DEC's 1967 TOPS-10 operating system led to RT-11 to CP/M to MS-DOS to NT to Windows 10. I'm not aware of government subsidy having any role in that.
I get saying that Windows was a better user environment (maybe) than what existed in UNIX at the time, though I was fine in FVWM.
But I don't think I can take someone seriously that thinks DOS is better than UNIX.
Also, Edison invented the vacuum tube upon which it is all based. I read a biography of him, and he never got a subsidy. Shouldn't he get all the credit?
Also I would call most of the government projects that Oracle is on subsidies considering how little value they deliver and how much they cost.
Selling to the government is not a subsidy.
There are probably many companies that make your point much better is all.
Or do you mean we don't need copyright protection, limited liability and bankruptcy protection allowing entrepreneurs to take risks, laws protecting investors and corporations, public education system, and so forth?
Why would Edison want all the credit? Newton said he only saw as far as he did by standing on the shoulders of giants. We are all inheriting the accumulated wealth and knowledge of all the people who came before us. Why not the people around immediately before us who built the society we live in?
> Why would Edison want all the credit?
Why indeed.
Existing in a country where a private company is a profit center as opposed to something for bandits to loot?