tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485455051458949924.post2985689251908898283..comments2024-01-10T06:18:05.838+00:00Comments on eReaderJoy: EU Commissioner Calls for Open Ebook FormatsEolake Stobblehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07126147415891586345noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485455051458949924.post-64314441235353239822011-10-18T22:07:28.318+01:002011-10-18T22:07:28.318+01:00Yeah, see, that's what I hope. But I'll be...Yeah, see, that's what I hope. But I'll believe it when I see it, so far the resistance is nominal.Eolake Stobblehousehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07126147415891586345noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485455051458949924.post-57556798804823175702011-10-18T21:25:27.317+01:002011-10-18T21:25:27.317+01:00... it's unfortunate that the Kindle format, b...<i>... it's unfortunate that the Kindle format, by far the most popular, is proprietary. It's absurd that a Kindle can't read ePub format for example.</i><br /><br />I agree. The only reason Amazon can do this is because they control the content. But still, history teaches us that no one can hold users captive forever. Bezos too will eventually have to cave in.<br /><br />The present EU campaign is paving the way.Timo Lehtinenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08689481666881650781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485455051458949924.post-31269747156644432542011-10-18T21:10:14.609+01:002011-10-18T21:10:14.609+01:00WorldWideWeb was successful specifically because i...WorldWideWeb was successful specifically because it was free. I.e. there was nothing to license.<br /><br />The University of Minnesota made a strategic mistake in 1993 when it started to ask money for its popular <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)" rel="nofollow">Gopher</a> software. This pissed off a lot of users, and opened up a void for a similar but free tool. It was at this point that WorldWideWeb started to gain traction, and Gopher started to go out of favor.<br /><br />Don't forget that Berners-Lee's software only ran on a NeXT computer. But even if he had written versions of it for other machine architectures himself, as a commercial product it would have had absolutely no chances of success. Someone would have simply written a free tool to replace it.<br /><br />Internet protocols are all open and free. Even the control freaks at Apple know this and have made all the Internet protocols they've invented (Bonjour, etc.) open and free.<br /><br />An HTTP server can be written in about 100 lines of code. A web browser <i>is</i> a very complex piece of software, but all the real development on that was done outside CERN. (The first web browser for machines other than NeXT was actually written at Helsinki University of Technology.)<br /><br />Contrary to popular belief, WorldWideWeb was in no way a novel idea. HTML is an application of SGML. And there were many precedents of notation schemes similar to URL. And I hope that I don't need to remind anyone that hypertext had been around at least a decade before WWW.<br /><br />TBL did, however, coin the name WorldWideWeb. He could have commercialized the name if he had wanted to (only allow its use under a license), but that almost certainly would have killed it at the same time.<br /><br />If TBL or CERN hadn't existed, the world would still be currently using a distributed hypertext system just like WWW (minus the design flaws). It would simply be called something else.Timo Lehtinenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08689481666881650781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485455051458949924.post-60214555994090493242011-10-18T18:04:02.788+01:002011-10-18T18:04:02.788+01:00According to his book, he was being contacted all ...According to his book, he was being contacted all the time about how much they should pay him to use the WWW technology. <br /><br />(Damn, I knew you'd chime in somehow. I can't write about anything PC related without you having a differing viewpoint! :-)Eolake Stobblehousehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07126147415891586345noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485455051458949924.post-70081500528629068052011-10-18T17:08:40.824+01:002011-10-18T17:08:40.824+01:00Thank goodness for the idealism of Tim Berners-Lee...<i>Thank goodness for the idealism of Tim Berners-Lee, who could have been a multi-billionaire...</i><br /><br />Selling what?Timo Lehtinenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08689481666881650781noreply@blogger.com