Talk:WorldWideWeb

Public domain claim: the 1993 declaration does not cover the WorldWideWeb browser

The article (lead, "History" paragraph, and infobox) says the source code of the WorldWideWeb browser was released into the public domain on 30 April 1993. None of the cited sources support this. I think the article has conflated WorldWideWeb (the NeXT browser) with the World Wide Web / "the WWW software" generally.

The cited sources, one by one:

• CDS record 1164399 (the 1993 declaration). It puts exactly three things into the public domain: the W3 basic ("line-mode") client, the W3 basic server, and the W3 library of common code. The NeXT WorldWideWeb browser is not listed, and the declaration says it does not constitute a precedent to be applied to any other CERN copyright software. The citation title in our article ("put the World Wide Web into the public domain") describes the Web, not this program.
• Ref 12, "History of Libwww". As the title says, this is about libwww, not the browser. The GPL anecdote belongs to libwww, which is how Libwww tells it. Here it has been reattached to the browser.
• Ref 11, browsers.evolt.org. A dead download archive; at most it supports "versions are still available." Nothing about licensing.
• Berners-Lee's FAQ. Says the source code has always been publicly available. Publicly available is not public domain. The FAQ also confirms the line-mode browser was a separate program, written by Nicola Pellow.

Contemporary sources confirm the narrower scope:

• W3C's own newsletter, May 1993, says CERN released a certain subset of the W3 software: libwww, the basic server (httpd), and the line mode client. That matches the declaration exactly.
• Berners-Lee's announcement on www-talk, 7 May 1993 refers to the "basic World-Wide Web software," client and server code, not the NeXT application.

Likely objection: libwww was built partly from code that started in WorldWideWeb, so some of that code did become public domain as part of libwww. True, but going from "parts were later reworked into a public-domain library" to "WorldWideWeb's source code was released into the public domain" is WP:SYNTH. No source says the NeXT application itself was released.

The claim has been in the article since at least 2007, so I don't think anyone added it in bad faith. It looks like it has gathered citations over the years without anyone checking them.

Proposed changes:

1. Replace the History paragraph with:

   Berners-Lee and Groff later adapted many of WorldWideWeb's components into a portable C library, libwww. On 30 April 1993, CERN placed libwww, the line-mode browser and a basic web server into the public domain; Berners-Lee had considered releasing the library under the GNU General Public License but chose public domain so that companies would not be deterred. The WorldWideWeb application itself was not named in the declaration, though its source code has remained publicly available.

   (Keep refs 3 and 12 on the sentences they support; add W3C News 9305; FAQ for the last sentence. The Sotheby's NFT sentence is fine as is.)

2. Fix the lead sentence the same way.
3. Remove the infobox license field, since nothing sourced supports any license for the browser.

If anyone has a source that directly says the NeXT WorldWideWeb browser was placed in the public domain, please share it and I'm happy to be corrected. Otherwise I'll make these changes in a few days. ~2026-56804-27 (talk) 03:35, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia homepage?

If someone has a neXt can they download from http://browsers.evolt.org/?worldwideweb/NeXT and get a screen shot of the Wikipedia honme page? Rich Farmbrough 16:34, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

(( comment from yanzg-- 08:04, 21 July 2005 (UTC) deleted, since the suggested change has already been made in the main article ... ))

Near the second half of the section on "Features", I would recommend to say something there, about the sense in which Gopher had served, for a time of perhaps a few years, as a software solution that was intermediate between anonymous FTP and HTTP. (In fact, it took a while for Gopher to die, even after it was clear that http was better). Gopher was mostly sorta text-only, including the (hyper) links, but it was still great for its time, (partly because many users were still using DOS, which was also somewhat keyboard-oriented, as opposed to Windows, say) (or GUIs in general). But Gopher was still way more convenient to use than FTP. For example, Veronica was usually a lot easier to use, than Archie. Mike Schwartz 23:20, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Rename to Nexus?

Shouldn't this be renamed to Nexus? As that was the final name of the application itself...

It seems impractical to me, as it is more commonly referred to as WorldWideWeb. Also, there a many "Nexus"es, so it would be impractical in that respect as well. ~Linuxerist E/L/T 03:36, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Second Half of 1990?

Currently the Wiki states "Berners-Lee wrote WorldWideWeb in Objective-C on a NeXT computer during the second half of 1990." But it also says that the application was launched in 1991. How can the application be launched in the first half of 1990 but written in the second half??

Read what you're saying..?

I think it means he wrote hte program during the second part of 1990, but decided to release the program in early 1991. RingtailedFox • Talk • Stalk 19:55, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Fast Forward in Opera

The forward and backward feature mentioned in the trivia section resurfaced in Opera 7. This made use of the rel attribute in link tags to enable forward or backward navigation. I'm not sure if this is worth mentioning. --David Chisnall 13:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Other "modern" browsers preceded Opera in implementing a UI for LINK tags. ⇔ ChristTrekker 21:12, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

On Portal:Free software, WorldWideWeb is currently the selected article

(2007-04-09) Just to let you know. The purpose of selecting an article is both to point readers to the article and to highlight it to potential contributors. It will remain on the portal for a week or so. The previous selected article was MediaWiki. Gronky 07:36, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The selected article box has been updated again, WorldWideWeb has been superceded by rsync. Gronky 11:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I have yet to discover where exactly this "open source code" can be obtained from! ⇔ ChristTrekker 21:15, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Thought to search for Nexus in conjunction with TBL and found it. ⇔ ChristTrekker 16:45, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Features

"In this sense, WorldWideWeb can be considered a predecessor to wikis, of which Wikipedia is the most popular." Not only is the last statement in the sentence not backed up by a source, it doesn't seem to be relevant. Should it be removed? 84.27.15.58 19:23, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Agree, it sounds like the opposite of a wiki. Helpsloose 19:32, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Bookmarks in WorldWideWeb

I wanted to correct the grammar of this sentence - "WorldWideWeb didn't have features like bookmarks, but a similar feature was presented in the browser: if a link should be saved for later use linking it to you're own home page (start page) and the link was remembered like bookmarks." - but I'm not actually sure what it means!

Is it, as I think, saying that you would create the equivalent to bookmarks in WorldWideWeb by linking to the page you wished to return to from your own home page? (And if that is so, does it mean the browser had a feature to automate the process, or just that users were in the habit of editing their home pages manually to do so?) Because while that would obviously be the ancestor of bookmarks/favorites, it is also a lot more than that: a great illustration of how different the early web was - or was meant to be - from the way we use it today. Sergeirichard (talk) 18:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

August 1991

Release of LineMode, not WorldWideWeb/NexUS (never publicly released apparently, not more than Eelco van Asperen's version at least). BTW a less Orwellian reference for the beggining than currently available one might be that (none other app mentioned).

Public domain

", making it free software" : not in 1993, public domain software can be distributed without the source code, or worse, be the base of new non-free software. genium ⟨✉⟩ 07:44, 27 August 2013 (UTC) The beginning of the article says the source code was released in 1991, while the release documents are 30 April 1993. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.102.167.143 (talk) 12:58, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

WWW Icon

The WorldWideWeb icon is 62x55 pixels but is being scaled to 64x57 pixels on the main page, making it look very blurry indeed! I don't know why this is or how to change it though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.162.159.64 (talk) 19:47, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

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A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

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Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 21:57, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Reason for discontinuation

I think it would make sense for the article to explain why this software was discontinued. Was it displaced by other competing browsers? Were they superior, and if so, how? Or was there some other reason? ~2025-38000-28 (talk) 02:58, 25 December 2025 (UTC)