The name Tim Berners-Lee may not be well known, but he is in our lives every day. Berners-Lee is the founder and creator of the software that became the basis of the World Wide Web.

A graduate of Oxford University in England, Berners-Lee addressed what was becoming an increasingly frustrating issue related to computer technology—the lack of ability to share data. Largely because of the operating systems developed by Microsoft and other traditional software developers, computers were designed to be stand-alone pieces of equipment without the ability to share information. That all changed in 1989 when Berners-Lee invented the software related to the establishment of the World Wide Web while working at CERN, which is the European Particle Physics Laboratory. A year later, he wrote the software for the first web client and server and was creator of the now common programs such as uniform resource identifiers (URIs), hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), and HTML. In one of the more significant decisions related to not only business, but society, Berners-Lee made the software code “open source” so that anyone could use it, adopt it, and change it for free. This one decision fundamentally changed how society operates and was in complete opposition to the stand-alone model that charges users for access to any type of “propriety” software. As a result, the actions of Berners-Lee should be studied by those would benefit society, even if it means that there will not be the same type of self-interest rewards for their action. One last point to consider: If Berners-Lee had used a “cost” model in which it would cost a user 5 cents to use the Internet, how would that affect your day-to-day behavior?

Questions

1. Why do you think Tim Berners-Lee “gave away” such valuable software?

2. If you had developed the software that established the Internet, would you make this software available for free to anyone in the world? Why or why not?

3. What do you think would have happened to the Internet during the past 20 to 25 years if a company had charged for Internet use?