The father of 'www' finally gets his due Victoria Shannon/IHT IHT Monday, June 14, 2004
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That is why some people think it is fitting - or about time - that he finally becomes wealthy, with the award Tuesday of the world's largest technology prize, the Millennium Technology Prize from the Finnish Technology Award Foundation. The E1 million, or $1.2 million, prize for outstanding technological achievements that raised the quality of life is supported by the Finnish government and private contributors.
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"It was a very nice surprise," Berners-Lee said in an interview Sunday as three days of ceremonies began here.
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But only one who conceived of the World Wide Web (originally, Berners-Lee called it a "mesh" before changing it to a "web"). Before him, there were no browsers, no hypertext markup language, no "www" in any Internet address, no URLs, or uniform resource locators.
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Because he and his colleague, Robert Cailliau, a Belgian, insisted on a license-free technology, today a Gateway computer with a Linux operating system and a browser made by Netscape can see the same Web page as any other personal computer, system software or Internet browser.
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If his then-employer, CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, had sought royalties, Berners-Lee believes the world would have 16 different "webs" on the Internet today.
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"Goodness knows, there were plenty of hypertext systems before that didn't interoperate," Berners-Lee said. "There would have been a CERN Web, a Microsoft one, there would have been a Digital one, Apple's HyperCard would have started reaching out Internet roots. And all of these things would have been incompatible."
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Software patenting today, Berners-Lee says, has run amok. In April, Microsoft was awarded a U.S. patent for the use of short, long or double-clicks on the same button of a hand-held computer to launch applications, according to a report earlier this month on eWeek.com. And Microsoft said last week it was appealing a $521 million judgment - the second-biggest patent-infringement award - won by a Chicago company called Eolas Technologies over plug-in applications in Internet browers.
