Around 1991, HTML and the World Wid

Around 1991, HTML and the World Wide Web were invented at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, and at the time the largest Internet site in Europe, by Tim Berners-Lee. lt spread very quickly. In 1993, the Mosaic browser was developed at the National Center for Super- Applications (NCSA) in Illinois. Work on the Apache s computing began in 1995. based on prior work on the NCSA Web server. The Web server and browser solved the problem of ease of use for Inter- net users, as well as the problem of a simple model for GUI network devel- opment and deployment. It has turned out to be the most important new in the history of computer software. We may not yet under stand all of its implications. Berners-Lee might have licensed the Web idea using the GPL, which would have ensured it was open source, but he put it in the public domain. This meant that open source and closed code developers are free to use the ideas and code. For a while, it was not clear whether the Web would take a closed code direction. Netscape had acquired much of the NCSA develop. ment team and planned to sell closed code browsers and servers. Microsoft licensed the original Web code and planned to distribute closed code Web browsers and servers with custom extensions with Windows. If the proto cols were extended by competing closed code companies, there might in effect be not one but several competing proprietary Webs by now, as there are competing incompatible versions of instant messenger software