If HTTP was for sale or at auction today, how much do you think it could go for? And which companies or people do you think would be interested in buying it?
Ask HN: How much is HTTP worth?
1–10 of 13 posts
Re: Ask HN: How much is HTTP worth?
#2You mean the protocol? Well it can't be sold as the standard is open and there is (as far as I know) no reference implementation which include special/exclusive features which might have some intrinsic IP value.
I think the extensibility of the protocol together with some proprietary features layered on top might have value though. I can't think of an example at the moment.
Re: Ask HN: How much is HTTP worth?
#3 HTTP was for sale
For instance, "selling" exclusive rights to serve HTTP would likely devalue the protocol to zero as quickly as systems could switch over to something else.
Re: Ask HN: How much is HTTP worth?
#4Make an NFT for it and put it up for auction. Sure, it doesn't make sense, but neither does the question.
Re: Ask HN: How much is HTTP worth?
#5HTTP was for sale What would this mean, exactly? What would "buying HTTP" mean for the buyer? The valuation is going to be strongly dependent on the actual "thing" being sold. For instance, "selling" exclusive rights to serve HTTP would likely devalue the protocol to zero as quickly as systems could switch over to something else.
> What would this mean, exactly? What would "buying HTTP" mean for the buyer?
Ah, it's an NFT hard problem.
Re: Ask HN: How much is HTTP worth?
#6HTTP was for sale What would this mean, exactly? What would "buying HTTP" mean for the buyer? The valuation is going to be strongly dependent on the actual "thing" being sold. For instance, "selling" exclusive rights to serve HTTP would likely devalue the protocol to zero as quickly as systems could switch over to something else.
Oh you know, like NFT. A link to a .jpg of a HTML. Im putting it at a couple $mil.
Re: Ask HN: How much is HTTP worth?
#7Re: Ask HN: How much is HTTP worth?
#8I guess what you're trying to do is ascribe some value to HTTP? Difficult thought experiment imo. Never the less: Let's say this ubiquitous protocol was mystically developed and owned by a private entity. I suppose the closest parallels in terms of direct commercialization would be Oracle or RedHat. If you wanted to play out that hypothetical you'd either have people buy into a license to your protocol somehow, adoption might be difficult, you could let everyone adopt it without enforcing some type of license, then you'd retroactively try to strongarm the project, you'd likely end up with a Joyent Node / IO js situation where someone forked it and that became the thing.
All of that is to say, HTTP is effectively infinitely valuable to society at this point, and it's so valuable precisely because it was never directly commercialized.
Re: Ask HN: How much is HTTP worth?
#9I guess you could also ask "What is language worth?" or "What is democracy worth?", "What is habeas corpus worth?". Some things really don't have an economic value attributed to them, because they are part of the fabric of the market from which economic value is defined.
Re: Ask HN: How much is HTTP worth?
#10https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law
so HTTP is roughly (2 billion devices)^2, with an average of $500 per device is (2b*$500)^2 =
$1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
it's official. Jeff Bezos can't buy HTTP.