In 1991, I wanted to write about the WWW for NeXTWORLD magazine. Tim Berners-Lee replied to my email, saying he was reluctant to widely publicize that code for the web was available for free, as management at CERN had not yet agreed to release it publicly. The web grew slowly the first two years. At the time, I really didn't understand his hesitance, but in hindsight it was for the best. Two years ago, I wrote about the early days of the web on its 30th anniversary [0].
To me, Tim Berners-Lee is brilliant not just for his vision of a WorldWideWeb and its technical underpinnings, but also for an astute political streak in shepherding it to widespread adoption. I appreciate Jay Hoffmann (the article's author) for marking the significance of the anniversary.
For me as a kid, there was a huge gap between something that was free and something that was not. The difference between asking my parents for something and just getting (downloading) it.
I now have my own disposable income, but I still think long and hard in case I have to spend money; the actual price being secondary to the fact, that the thing is not free.
Yeah; I have the same reaction to products like Notion or Figma where someone is footing the bill to keep servers on. And if those servers ever turn off, I lose access to my stuff.
Either I'm paying for a product, and as soon as I stop paying, I've lost access to my stuff (Figma, Notion). Or the product is free, and someone is somehow intending to make money from me being their user. They'll either start charging down the line, or they're selling my data or my attention to advertisers (tiktok, twitter, etc).
I don't think I like using SAAS products because its never really free. At least not in the same way the web is free or vim is free.
Which is why, as a kid, I was fine with piracy. I couldn't have bought Photoshop in a million years, and back then there was no free for education or whatnot.
These days, I can afford it. Hell, I even bought Winrar as a thanks for many years of using it.
And this is the real difference between him and Ted Nelson.
Nelson fantasizes about being the media mogul of a publishing empire under his technology. It's ultimately a proprietary format play.
This is the significant difference. I tried to explain it to Ted, personally, in Sausalito about 10 years ago over a lunch, as politely as I could.
You need to blow it open, as much as possible and make it as easy as possible without necessitating others to opt in. Information networks can't be built by an authoritarian conquer and covet strategy.
It's been tried countless times and history has zero successful test cases to study with that strategy. From DIVX to Flexplay, dvd-d to any format war ever, crippleware rent-seeking is a death knell. It will firebomb the most successful thing into oblivion overnight.
I failed to convince him this was the key difference. Ah well.
I was thinking about this as well, but in a more broad sense: Tim was able to execute on his vision so that he get the project going and useful very fast, postponing parts of his original vision (like editing, link and page discoverability ...) for later if necessary.
and it's the same reason why i believe micropayments in general will not be the disruption that many expect. sure some people may actually make an income that way, but many others won't. (just like some people make money through ads and many don't.
Ever wonder why we don't see as much Docbook around as we might? I mean, aside from its XML Hellscape? Whelp. Because a lot of the widgets in this "open standard" are tied to closed license tools.
Take //revisionbar -> //fo:change-bar-begin. Go ahead and try to run that through Saxon. Yeah, that's right, the Official Opentopia DocBook FO gives you an element that can only get processed into PDF via vendor FO processors. And those vendors are NOT cheap.
Crap like this fed the growth of web-based PDF engines like WeasyPrint, Vivliostyle, Paged.js, Prawn, and, on the paid side, Prince. Incidentally, making changebars with Asciidoctor and Paged is a frickin' snap, and you do it from git CLI instead of hand-coding every goddamn change bar.
(But wait! You can hire yet another closed source tool to do a docbook diff that inserts the markup that can only be interpreted by another closed source tool! SIGN ME UP)
We're not even going to touch the many, many, many XML specifications that ride on proprietary blobs in their own PIs - without which the XML is completely unparseable. Or dual mode validation with DTDs riding alongside schemas in delightfully undefined ways. Or . . or . . blabbity blabbity blah. Short version, whatever extra functionality was gained from XML publishing - and I'm not convinced there were any gains at all, even theoretical ones - was largely just not worth these sorts of traps. So today the whole ecosystem is today one that's largely based on government requirements and the starry-eyed consultants who love them. The rest of techcomm picked up lightweight markup or joined the Church of Madcap.
> In February of 1993, the University of Minnesota made an announcement. In specific commercial usage of the protocol, they would be charging licensing fees. Not large fees, and not in all cases. But, in some small way, they would be restricting access.
I remember gopher and thinking it was pretty useful and easy to use.
This decision by them seems to have been a monumental mistake.
I'm curious if anyone here knows who at Minnesota made this decision and why.
That, to me, is another interesting aspect to this story, but it is understandable people are more reluctant to talk about a failure than a success.
The brilliant piece of the web, the bit that was revolutionary, the bit that most web alternatives not only fail to implement but appear to be fundamentally unable to implement, because let's face it, this is a terrible idea. is the idea that one web document can load any other web document.
Hypercard is the common bogey man for a better web that failed, but in my mind the closest modern web alternative that failed to do this is the app store. now I know why the app model does not let you load arbitrary resources and you know why the app model does not let you load arbitrary resources, but in the right sort of light, if you squint the right way, you can see what may have been, how perhaps the exec() syscall may have taken an argument, a url, of what to exec.
This article could use some precision about exactly what rights they were giving up. Rights to the "World Wide Web" not so much. Specific copyrights and patent rights are something else. There could have been patents that were essential and might have put the World Wide Web as we know it in a deep freeze from the beginning.
It is there in the original CERN approval letter at the bottom of the article. CERN was relinquishing rights and putting into public domain the following three software artefacts and binaries.
- W3 basic ("line-mode") client
- W3 basic server
- W3 library of common code
In How the Web was Born[1] I red that Tim also considered GPL at some point as he liked the FSF's approach, but as the OP notes in the post, he decided to go with public domain so that it would not scare off some companies from using libwww code.
The whole early period of web development is quite interesting. The decision about the licensing was not the only crucial decision which made it succeed, like release of libwww, focus on super simple browser which works on any platform (line mode) or introduction of gateways ... Recently I wrote a blog post about it focusing on design of first browsers and forces which were driving it.
Btw early users of the web mostly didn't know about the original Tim's vision and the 1st web gui browser/editor prototype. See for example hn comment from someone who was using original line mode browser under a post about the first browser/editor:
The impact of AI models will be as big as the web , now it is the critical defining moment of LLMs. Are we going to allow a few big companies control our access to AI ? This can happen just like Apple App Store . We must find a way to make AI free for all
> "Thirty years ago, Tim Berners-Lee and CERN gave the world a gift..."
The only reason the decision seems important now, is if you think the internet could of never been developed without the all-powerful minds of "Tim Berners-Lee and CERN"...
As computers got faster an nations and companies wanted to communicate between computers. It seems inevitable that the only way to communicate with computers is was a decentralised open and free network...
If it wasn't CERN, someone else would have built the internet...
Look at the current internet landscape- most users interact, find, and share content through the walled gardens of social networks. I don't think "decentralized open and free" networks are at all inevitable. To me those characteristics are shrinking, not growing.
Lets be glad it was someone with the foresight to imagine it as an open protocol from the beginning though. Interoperable and free to use things around it.
The fact that they didn't try to monetize the underlying tech is almost a miracle.
AI should follow the same principle. It has the potential to become as widespread as the web... And yet here we are paying a fee per N tokens to use GPT.
Img tag was important, but it doesn't mean that web was text only before the tag was introduced: people were linking to pictures in the same way how would one link to any other resource, and when you opened the link, the picture was shown in a new window.
> All documents have a specific owner, are royalty-bearing, and work through a micropayment system. Anyone can quote, transclude, or modify any amount of anything, with the payments sorting themselves out accordingly.
If you're of the right philosophical bent, that sounds familiar:
> Galambosianism is an early precursor to libertarian philosophy promoted by an aerospace engineer named Andrew J. Galambos (1924-1997) during the 1960s. He gave a series of for-pay classes starting with "V-50" ("The Theory of Volition"). Unlike other precursors to libertarianism (such as the ideas of Ayn Rand, Robert LeFevre, Albert Jay Nock, and Ludwig von Mises), Galambos' ideas have largely been thrown in the dustbin of history by his fellow libertarians.
> Galambos called himself a liberal, but in reality was philosophically somewhat closer to anarcho-capitalism. One of the core ideas of his philosophy, and the main sticking point preventing broader acceptance of it, was his belief in absolute intellectual property rights, meaning the inventor or originator of an idea should have absolute, lifelong heritable control over that idea and all the profits derived from it.
[snip]
> Other libertarians quickly found Galambosians to be obstinate cranks. Reportedly, Andrew Galambos and Ayn Rand once met and within five minutes each had declared the other insane. Also reportedly, Galambos would keep a jar or coffee can next to him when speaking in public, into which he would drop a nickel or dime any time he mentioned the name of another person, or mentioned an idea or phrase attributed to another person, to symbolize he was paying "royalties" to them for his use of their intellectual property. He went so far as to drop a nickel in "royalties" to the long-dead Thomas Paine every time he used the word "liberty", on the mistaken belief that the word was invented by Paine. Also reportedly, he was born Joseph Andrew Galambos, Jr. but legally changed his name to Andrew Joseph Galambos so he wouldn't infringe on his father's intellectual property rights.
[snip]
> Needless to say, a wiki article discussing Galambosianism should not be allowed in a free society, but it is okay only if you drop a nickel in the jar after reading this article.
I wonder if Ted Nelson ever pays royalties to Galambos. Probably not, the slacker.
[+] [-] DanielKehoe|2 years ago|reply
To me, Tim Berners-Lee is brilliant not just for his vision of a WorldWideWeb and its technical underpinnings, but also for an astute political streak in shepherding it to widespread adoption. I appreciate Jay Hoffmann (the article's author) for marking the significance of the anniversary.
[0] https://danielkehoe.com/posts/early-days-of-the-web-1991/
[+] [-] WillAdams|2 years ago|reply
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/821987
seemed a really good overview/history to me and is one which I always recommend.
He certainly earned his prominent rôle in the Y2K celebrations.
[+] [-] burglins|2 years ago|reply
I now have my own disposable income, but I still think long and hard in case I have to spend money; the actual price being secondary to the fact, that the thing is not free.
[+] [-] josephg|2 years ago|reply
Either I'm paying for a product, and as soon as I stop paying, I've lost access to my stuff (Figma, Notion). Or the product is free, and someone is somehow intending to make money from me being their user. They'll either start charging down the line, or they're selling my data or my attention to advertisers (tiktok, twitter, etc).
I don't think I like using SAAS products because its never really free. At least not in the same way the web is free or vim is free.
[+] [-] yata69420|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheeze|2 years ago|reply
These days, I can afford it. Hell, I even bought Winrar as a thanks for many years of using it.
[+] [-] eviks|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kristopolous|2 years ago|reply
Nelson fantasizes about being the media mogul of a publishing empire under his technology. It's ultimately a proprietary format play.
This is the significant difference. I tried to explain it to Ted, personally, in Sausalito about 10 years ago over a lunch, as politely as I could.
You need to blow it open, as much as possible and make it as easy as possible without necessitating others to opt in. Information networks can't be built by an authoritarian conquer and covet strategy.
It's been tried countless times and history has zero successful test cases to study with that strategy. From DIVX to Flexplay, dvd-d to any format war ever, crippleware rent-seeking is a death knell. It will firebomb the most successful thing into oblivion overnight.
I failed to convince him this was the key difference. Ah well.
[+] [-] calineczka|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marbu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] em-bee|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MilStdJunkie|2 years ago|reply
Ever wonder why we don't see as much Docbook around as we might? I mean, aside from its XML Hellscape? Whelp. Because a lot of the widgets in this "open standard" are tied to closed license tools.
Take //revisionbar -> //fo:change-bar-begin. Go ahead and try to run that through Saxon. Yeah, that's right, the Official Opentopia DocBook FO gives you an element that can only get processed into PDF via vendor FO processors. And those vendors are NOT cheap.
Crap like this fed the growth of web-based PDF engines like WeasyPrint, Vivliostyle, Paged.js, Prawn, and, on the paid side, Prince. Incidentally, making changebars with Asciidoctor and Paged is a frickin' snap, and you do it from git CLI instead of hand-coding every goddamn change bar.
(But wait! You can hire yet another closed source tool to do a docbook diff that inserts the markup that can only be interpreted by another closed source tool! SIGN ME UP)
We're not even going to touch the many, many, many XML specifications that ride on proprietary blobs in their own PIs - without which the XML is completely unparseable. Or dual mode validation with DTDs riding alongside schemas in delightfully undefined ways. Or . . or . . blabbity blabbity blah. Short version, whatever extra functionality was gained from XML publishing - and I'm not convinced there were any gains at all, even theoretical ones - was largely just not worth these sorts of traps. So today the whole ecosystem is today one that's largely based on government requirements and the starry-eyed consultants who love them. The rest of techcomm picked up lightweight markup or joined the Church of Madcap.
[+] [-] meindnoch|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsuvc|2 years ago|reply
I remember gopher and thinking it was pretty useful and easy to use.
This decision by them seems to have been a monumental mistake.
I'm curious if anyone here knows who at Minnesota made this decision and why.
That, to me, is another interesting aspect to this story, but it is understandable people are more reluctant to talk about a failure than a success.
[+] [-] neom|2 years ago|reply
https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-goph...
[+] [-] shortformblog|2 years ago|reply
I wrote something about this long ago, but Jay did a great job narrowing in on the pivotal moment. https://tedium.co/2017/06/22/modern-day-gopher-history/
[+] [-] neom|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] somat|2 years ago|reply
Hypercard is the common bogey man for a better web that failed, but in my mind the closest modern web alternative that failed to do this is the app store. now I know why the app model does not let you load arbitrary resources and you know why the app model does not let you load arbitrary resources, but in the right sort of light, if you squint the right way, you can see what may have been, how perhaps the exec() syscall may have taken an argument, a url, of what to exec.
[+] [-] ipcress_file|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mooooooooooooo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] butlerm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vivegi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marbu|2 years ago|reply
See also: https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web/licensing-web
[1] https://books.google.cz/books/about/How_the_Web_was_Born.htm...
[+] [-] marbu|2 years ago|reply
https://blog.marbu.eu/posts/2023-04-29-the-first-web-browser...
Btw early users of the web mostly didn't know about the original Tim's vision and the 1st web gui browser/editor prototype. See for example hn comment from someone who was using original line mode browser under a post about the first browser/editor:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34218748
[+] [-] anoy8888|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amw-zero|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gitgud|2 years ago|reply
The only reason the decision seems important now, is if you think the internet could of never been developed without the all-powerful minds of "Tim Berners-Lee and CERN"...
As computers got faster an nations and companies wanted to communicate between computers. It seems inevitable that the only way to communicate with computers is was a decentralised open and free network...
If it wasn't CERN, someone else would have built the internet...
[+] [-] ohitsdom|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] no_wizard|2 years ago|reply
The fact that they didn't try to monetize the underlying tech is almost a miracle.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lmarcos|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eru|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grishka|2 years ago|reply
And that's a shame. This ever-expanding scope of the web is a curse. We need to draw the line somewhere and just stop.
[+] [-] alasdairking|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marbu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abidlabs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sanjeevverma1|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msla|2 years ago|reply
https://dubinko.info/blog/2009/11/how-xanadu-works/
> All documents have a specific owner, are royalty-bearing, and work through a micropayment system. Anyone can quote, transclude, or modify any amount of anything, with the payments sorting themselves out accordingly.
If you're of the right philosophical bent, that sounds familiar:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Galambosianism
> Galambosianism is an early precursor to libertarian philosophy promoted by an aerospace engineer named Andrew J. Galambos (1924-1997) during the 1960s. He gave a series of for-pay classes starting with "V-50" ("The Theory of Volition"). Unlike other precursors to libertarianism (such as the ideas of Ayn Rand, Robert LeFevre, Albert Jay Nock, and Ludwig von Mises), Galambos' ideas have largely been thrown in the dustbin of history by his fellow libertarians.
> Galambos called himself a liberal, but in reality was philosophically somewhat closer to anarcho-capitalism. One of the core ideas of his philosophy, and the main sticking point preventing broader acceptance of it, was his belief in absolute intellectual property rights, meaning the inventor or originator of an idea should have absolute, lifelong heritable control over that idea and all the profits derived from it.
[snip]
> Other libertarians quickly found Galambosians to be obstinate cranks. Reportedly, Andrew Galambos and Ayn Rand once met and within five minutes each had declared the other insane. Also reportedly, Galambos would keep a jar or coffee can next to him when speaking in public, into which he would drop a nickel or dime any time he mentioned the name of another person, or mentioned an idea or phrase attributed to another person, to symbolize he was paying "royalties" to them for his use of their intellectual property. He went so far as to drop a nickel in "royalties" to the long-dead Thomas Paine every time he used the word "liberty", on the mistaken belief that the word was invented by Paine. Also reportedly, he was born Joseph Andrew Galambos, Jr. but legally changed his name to Andrew Joseph Galambos so he wouldn't infringe on his father's intellectual property rights.
[snip]
> Needless to say, a wiki article discussing Galambosianism should not be allowed in a free society, but it is okay only if you drop a nickel in the jar after reading this article.
I wonder if Ted Nelson ever pays royalties to Galambos. Probably not, the slacker.
[+] [-] vrglvrglvrgl|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]