Web developer Tim Berners-Lee sells a copy of his computer code for $ 4 5.4 million

By nature, we can not buy the Internet: Using the World Wide Web site is free. But on June 23, auction house Sotheby’s offered one of its pillars, Tim Berners-Lee, one of the Internet’s major historical contributors, the creator of the Internet – the “web”, which allows you to move from site to site. Also, after a crazy week of bidding, on June 30, an unidentified buyer bought it for $ 5.4 million, or about 4.55 million euros.

This computer code is stored in NFT (non-fungal token) format, which is a locked system file with a certificate of relative authenticity that protects bitcoins. This NFT contains 10,000 lines of computer code written by Tim Berners-Lee in the early 1990s, dated, as well as a screenshot of the entire code and a 30-minute video. Scroll these lines.

Charities

NFT There is one more letter The scientist explains under what conditions this source code was created. In particular, he explains his key contribution to three inventions: the URL, a unique address that identifies every document worldwide, HTML, the computer language in which web pages are still frequently written today, and HTTP, communication rules specifically allow the web browser to retrieve information on a remote computer.

The researcher defended himself Nearby Telegraph It is an indictment of commercialism to compare this initiative with the sale of an autographed book or to hold a series of conferences. “It is completely aligned with the values ​​of the web”, He told the English daily.

“I do things like this that involve money, but the web is free and open. We have to fight again and again to keep it that way, especially by fighting for its neutrality (…). I’m always in the potential to use NFTs to fund creative people like musicians and artists (…). I’m interested. In the digital world, having the potential to produce the equivalent of an object would be useful. “

According to Sotheby’s, the proceeds from the sale will go to a good cause chosen by the scientist and his wife.