On Apr 6, 2012, at 2:04 PM, Richard Sharpe wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Someone is asserting that I first said that back in June 02, 2001 and
> 17:43:08+0900.
>
> Certainly there is an email thred to that effetc from back then, but
> my recollection is that I saw it somewhere else and simply repeated
> it.
>
> Does anyone know where it first came from? Was it already on the
> Ethereal web site back then already?
I found an April 18, 2001 e-mail in which I said to some friends:
> And then there's the motto of the Ethereal packet analyzer:
>
> http://www.ethereal.com/
>
> "Sniffing the glue that holds the Internet together".
so it antedates June 2, 2001.
I think it was on the Web site back then and that I was quoting the Web site.
That's the oldest thing I can find in my mailbox.
The Wayback Machine's first snapshot that contains that phrase is, perhaps not surprisingly, April 1, 2001 (although the previous snapshot was almost a month before that, so it's not as if it proves it was added April 1):
http://web.archive.org/web/20010401173540/http://www.ethereal.com/
and an April 5 snapshot also has it:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010405042028/http://www.ethereal.com/
Gerald, did you originally replace "A network protocol analyzer":
http://web.archive.org/web/20010302055617/http://www.ethereal.com/
with "Sniffing the glue that holds the Internet together" as an April Fools' prank, and decide to keep it there?