Research · Inventors & entrepreneurs
Five builders, two questions
How was the builder paid? What remained open for everyone else to use? These profiles follow both questions through five familiar inventions.
The answers are different. McLean earned his fortune through a shipping company. Berners-Lee worked at CERN and later led a standards body. Torvalds has been paid for maintaining Linux. Creative Commons is a nonprofit, and Visa began as an association owned by participating banks. Even “open” means something different in each story: public-domain software, source code under the GPL, free legal tools, patents shared with a standards body, or ownership limited to member banks.
Profile 1
Malcom McLean
McLean made his fortune through Sea-Land while container patents were made available to ISO without charge.
Profile 2
Tim Berners-Lee
CERN released the early Web software for anyone to use, modify, and distribute without a fee.
Profile 3
Linus Torvalds
Linux and Git remained available under the GPL while Torvalds earned a living through salaried work.
Profile 4
Creative Commons
A nonprofit team gave copyright holders a standard way to grant permission before anyone needed to ask.
Profile 5
Dee Hock
Visa began as a network owned by participating banks, then became a public company in 2008.