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   World Wide Web Consortium (w3c@w3c.social)'s status on Thursday, 01-May-2025 02:21:38 JST World Wide Web Consortium

   • timbl

   On 30 April 1993, CERN's Directors declared that the three components of Web software (the basic line-mode client, the basic server and the library of common code) that Tim Berners-Lee @timbl had first proposed in 1989, were to be put in the Public Domain.

   We are grateful to CERN and to Tim for this world changing decision which has enabled the W3C community to create open, accessible, international web standards which make the web work, for everyone.
   https://home.web.cern.ch/science/computing/birth-web/licensing-web

   • Embed this notice
     David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*) (david_chisnall@infosec.exchange)'s status on Thursday, 01-May-2025 02:22:05 JST David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

     in reply to

     • Colin
     • GothPanda

     @gothpanda @colinstu Also, this code was released 32 years ago and made its way into a lot of places. Being permissively licensed (public domain being the most permissively license [or, technically, lack of license] possible) enabled this and is a big part of the reason that the web was a success.

     There are a lot of examples of protocols with permissively licensed reference implementations becoming ubiquitous. There are very few examples of GPL’d ones. If you want a protocol to take off, make sure that there’s a permissively licensed reference implementation.

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Thursday, 01-May-2025 02:22:05 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Colin
     • David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)
     • GothPanda
     @david_chisnall @gothpanda @colinstu I've tried to use this same analogy but people refuse to believe it. Permissively licensed protocols become standards, GPL licensed ones do not. Simple as.
   • Embed this notice
     GothPanda (gothpanda@pandapla.net)'s status on Thursday, 01-May-2025 02:22:06 JST GothPanda

     in reply to

     • Colin

     @colinstu public domain means you can do whatever you want with it. It doesn't require any usage to also be in the public domain.

     feld repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Colin (colinstu@birdbutt.com)'s status on Thursday, 01-May-2025 02:22:07 JST Colin

     in reply to

     • GothPanda

     @gothpanda kinda wish this was GPL’d of some sort vs public domain. Gonna kill any use of the code. (Well besides writing more public domain stuff…)