Tim Berners-Lee (@timbl) explains why he gave away the #WWW for free.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/28/why-i-gave-the-world-wide-web-away-for-free
"For the web to have everything on it, everyone had to be able to use it, and want to do so. This was already asking a lot. I couldn’t also ask that they pay for each search or upload they made. In order to succeed, therefore, it would have to be free. That’s why, in 1993, I convinced my #CERN managers to donate the intellectual property of the world wide web, putting it into the public domain. We gave the web away to everyone."
But he adds:
"Today, I look at my invention and I am forced to ask: is the web still free today? No, not all of it. We see a handful of large platforms harvesting users’ private data to share with commercial brokers or even repressive governments…Trading personal data for use certainly does not fit with my vision for a free web."