When the internet was born

I was reading Stephen Crocker's Op-Ed in the New York Times and one particular comment he made struck me.

"It probably helped that in those days we avoided patents and other restrictions; without any financial incentive to control the protocols, it was much easier to reach agreement." - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/opinion/07crocker.html

I stopped and thought for a minute, what would have become of my beloved internet had one of the founders tried to patent some of the core technology?

The whole design and architecture worked because it was open and shared, it was not proprietary and used to gain a profit...

Beautiful