So... web browsers? I think it's important to distinguish between applications and protocols. Successful applications based on decentralized networks seem to

So... web browsers? I think it's important to distinguish between applications and protocols. Successful applications based on decentralized networks seem to be a mix of both application code and protocol. So in discussing email, we are probably discussing SMTP and IMAP, and then the applications are the email clients that speak those protocols. Similarly, when we talk about the web we are talking about TCP/IP and HTTP(S), (also DNS, CGI, etc) and the browsers are again the clients that speak those protocols. It seems to me that the success of the world wide web has entirely to do with TBL making sure that his superiors released his work into the public domain[1]. Whereas with something like World of Warcraft, there you have an extremely successful application, but it's based on a proprietary protocol, proprietary code, and centralized networks. Could it have been more successful if Blizzard had released the protocol and client into the public domain? [1]http://cds.cern.ch/record/1164399 http://cds.cern.ch/record/1164399