{"id":61,"date":"2002-12-04T20:25:00","date_gmt":"2002-12-05T00:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/wp\/?p=11"},"modified":"2002-12-04T20:25:00","modified_gmt":"2002-12-05T00:25:00","slug":"why-wasnt-the-web-built-on-ftp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/2002\/12\/why-wasnt-the-web-built-on-ftp\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Wasn’t the Web Built on FTP?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dave Winer points to<\/a> an interesting question from Daniel Berlinger<\/a>; Why wasn’t the Web built on FTP?<\/p>\n\n

This, and related ones such as “Could<\/em> the Web have been built on FTP?”, or even “Why did the Web win, and not Gopher?”<\/a>, are excellent questions with really interesting answers that expose historical, political, and technical aspects of the World Wide Web project. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I’ve done my research, so I think I’m a good person to ask (of course, you could just ask Tim<\/a> for the authoritative answer)<\/p>\n\n

I think the answer to Daniel’s question is pretty easy; Tim chose to start with a new protocol, because he was innovating and FTP was well-entrenched at that time (if he even considered FTP at all, I don’t know). Tim’s (and later, Roy’s) innovations would have required substantial changes to FTP too (support for URIs, and the fallout from that being the big one), so I think it was a wise choice.<\/p>\n\n

So, could<\/em> the Web have been built on FTP? I’d say probably\nnot, no. Other than the aforementioned points, other things that would\neffect this would include;<\/p>\n\n