Tim Berners-Lee had invented the web at CERN in 1989 to help physicists share documents, but it was CERN's decision to release the underlying code royalty-free that let it explode beyond the laboratory. The move stripped away commercial barriers just as the internet was becoming publicly accessible, paving the way for Mosaic, Netscape, and the explosive growth of the web through the 1990s.
Before this announcement, the web existed mostly as an obscure tool among physicists and a handful of enthusiasts trading files across academic networks. Berners-Lee had built the first browser, server, and HTML markup language largely alone, motivated by frustration at how hard it was to find information scattered across incompatible computer systems at CERN.
The decision to release the code without licensing fees was not obvious at the time—CERN's management debated whether to patent the technology. Robert Cailliau, Berners-Lee's collaborator, pushed hard for openness, arguing that a proprietary web would fracture into competing standards, much as videotape formats once had.
The royalty-free release meant any programmer anywhere could build a browser or server without CERN's permission or payment. Within two years, Marc Andreessen's Mosaic browser and its commercial successor, Netscape Navigator, brought the web to ordinary households, and by the decade's end the open web had reshaped commerce, journalism, and daily life across the globe.
Key people: Tim Berners-Lee