Keeping the web open to all

Tim Berners-Lee was a programmer at CERN, the European high-energy physics lab, when he had an idea to greatly simplify the internet. Instead of typing commands to fetch information from another computer, readers would simply click on a link and a new page would appear. The world’s computers would become on seamless information space, freely accessible to all.

Berners-lee wrote the codes for Hypertext Transfer protocol (HTTP) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). More importantly, he persuaded CERN to release them into the world with no patents, licenses or other strings attached.

As a result, anybody could adopt them without fear of lawsuits or owing a penny in royalties. Within a few years, the World Wide Web was ubiquitous. Berner-Lee then moved to MIT to lead an international consortium dedicated to preserving the Web as a non-proprietary space. He wrote the first web client (browser-editor) and server in 1990.

At numerous points along the way, Berners-Lee could have started or joined a business, and he probably would have earned millions. Each time, he declined. “I wanted to see the Web proliferate, not sink my life’s hours into worrying over a product release.”