The “father” of the world-famous “www” (World Wide Web) sold at auction a copy of its original source code for $ 5.43 million
The British Sir Tim Berners-Lee announced that the proceeds will be donated by him and his wife for public purposes.
The source code was auctioned off in the form of a “Non-Fungible Token” (NFT), a digital copyright certificate for items that are often non-existent, which is stored in the international digital “store” of the blockchain. The auction, which lasted a week and “pulled” 51 bids, started with the amount of only 1,000 euros, while the winner-buyer remained anonymous.
What is included in the package
Four different things are contained in the NFT that was sold, according to the BBC, the New York Times and Reuters: The time-stamped source files (9,555 lines of code), a 30-minute animated video on how to write, a digital letter written this June by Berners-Lee and a digital poster of the code he created.
Sir Tim created the WWW at CERN in 1989, linking different information from the early Internet to hyperlinks. He created the first web browser and refused to patent his invention. In 1993 CERN granted all rights to the new technology for free use.
As Berners-Lee explained about the auction, “I’m not selling the Web, I’m not even selling the source code, I’m just selling an image I made of it, with a Python program I made myself, which shows what it would look like. source code if it was stuck on the wall and signed by me “.
click4more: Thessaloniki: Robot will “tread” vineyard grapes for the first time (pics)
Sotheby’s described the auctioned item as “the only signed copy of the code for the first web browser to exist”. “Symbolism, history, the fact that they come from their creator, is what makes some things valuable, and there are a lot of people who collect objects just for these reasons. We could not sell such a thing ten years ago, but now NFTs allow us to do so. Previously in the history of science there were manuscripts that you could hold in your hand. “As we progress, more and more such manuscripts are being created in digital form,” said Cassandra Hutton, vice-president of the British auction house.
Berners-Lee, who co-founded NFT with Sotheby’s, did better than Twitter boss Jack Dorsey, who auctioned off the first tweet (also NFT-certified) for $ 2.9 million. dollars.
READ ALSO