As Andrew Carnegie said: "my heart is in the work", I can't wait to
see how Bill Gates dispose his fortune when he dies.
-----Original Message-----
From: Gavin Thomas Nicol [mailto:gtn@ebt.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 1999 5:50 PM
To: FoRK@xent.com
Subject: RE: a real Net scandal
> James Fallows writes, "Tim Berners-Lee did not get rich.
Neither did I, or many others I know. Then again, I think
that many of the best technical ideas weren't accepted until
way too late anyway. It was a long, hard battle for XML...
hells teeth, I remember being laughed at in Boston for
espousing the notion that tag explosion was the best thing
since sliced bread (remember Hakon and Bert?).
At the end of the day, the WWW has benefited selfish and
cynical people more than anyone else. Like the folk that
built the internet in the first place (postel et al.), the
pioneers are left behind when money flows.
I like Tim for his character. The fact that he has *not*
made money gives him more right to a place in history than
HTTP (a pretty poor protocol in many ways), HTML (which
borrowed a lot from GML) and URL's (which I think is the
most significant invention). To me it shows a humanitarian
at heart (or cynically, a man that realises success would be
his demise). I prefer the first interpretation.