[Opensim-dev] The internet that never happened (still happy birthday to poor Tim)

[Dirk Krause]

After being in the business for quite some time, I learned today that 20 years ago Tim Berners Lee invented the WWW (ok, granted, I knew that :-) ).

What I didn't know is that he did it with an application that was viewer and editor at the same time. Which was a splendid idea!

Epic fail #1: after some time he split it into a so called browser, leaving the poor WWW pioneers with editing HTML with a text editor. Bummer!

Learning #1: always include editor and viewer in one app. It's obvious - everybody who reads a book wants to write one, too.

Epic fail #2: Then some time later the institute he was working for released the source code (not the app! the code!) named libwww to the public domain. The public domain!! Helloho! They gave it away for free!

Learning #2: never release the source code of your precious proprietary server software. At least not if you want to last long. Offer them APIs to integrate instead. 


Of course the whole thing didn't work out.

That's why this is the sad story of ...
... why the 2D internet never happened.


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