[leephillips]

That’s not why the web won over gopher. This is why:

“Both Gopher and the Web embraced the idea of hypertext. Both allowed users to follow a conceptual path through a virtual space by following links, with little need to understand the structure that existed underneath. They differed considerably, however, in the information architecture that they established for laying out hyperlinked information. The main difference between the two is that the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) of the Web was built up around documents in HyperText Markup Language (HTML). This markup language allowed document creators to place links within documents, whereas Gopher provided pointers to documents through menu files, which existed separate from the documents themselves. The indexing component of the two information architectures -- i.e. the part that enumerated what items existed within the information space and where they could be found -- thus differed considerably.” From https://ils.unc.edu/callee/gopherpaper.htm

I was using Gopher and WAIS (nobody seems to remember that), both improved versions of FTP, when the web appeared. It immediately captured my imagination, and I and everyone around me forgot about the other protocols (except FTP, which hung on for ever). It had nothing to do with licensing. It was hypertext.