When Tim Berners-Lee developed the first specifications, protocols, and tools for the World Wide Web in 1993, his employers at C
ERN chose to make the underlying code publicly available on a royalty-free basis so that anyone who ever wanted to use it or build upon it could do so without having to pay any licensing fees to CERN or ask for CERN's permission. Which of the following best describes the reasons for this decision?
a. CERN did not recognize the full potential of the World Wide Web and did not think it was worth investing any more of its own resources into its further development.
b. By offering the Word Wide Web as a freely available alternative, CERN hoped to discourage people from using America Online, CERN's biggest competitor for online communication services.
c. Had the technology been proprietary (i.e., closed and privately licensed), it would likely not have become as popular as it has or have been adopted by so many users and institutions across the globe.
d. Because Tim Berners-Lee did not ask his employers for permission before using CERN resources to develop the World Wide Web, as punishment, he was required to give the technology away for free and sacrifice the millions of dollars he could have personally made by selling his idea for a profit.
People trust open-source software - if they can see how it works and understand it, they can help improve it and build applications using it. If these protocols were not publicly available - then nobody would have implemented services using them - so nobody would be adopting it.
