There are softwares developed using the latest IDE’s and then there are those that take years or even decades for development. Project Xanadu is one that belongs to the latter and it has spent a whopping 54 years in the process.
Xanadu, developed by Ted Nelson aims at embedding the sources, linked back to, of a document created by the user coherently. In the creators words, “an entire form of literature where links do not break as versions change; where documents may be closely compared side by side and closely annotated; where it is possible to see the origins of every quotation; and in which there is a valid copyright system – a literary, legal and business arrangement – for frictionless, non-negotiated quotation at any time and in any amount.
After 54 years , Xanadu, was released at California’s Chapman in late April. OpenXanadu, the version released on the internet had quotings from King James Bible and the Wikipedia page on Steady State Theory apart from six others.
Very similar to the current world wide web. this one had the potential to even beat it given a proper release date decades ago. “The web trivialized this original Xanadu model,” Nelson argued in 2004, “vastly but incorrectly simplifying these problems to a world of fragile ever-breaking one-way links, with no recognition of change or copyright, and no support for multiple versions or principled re-use.”
Also the navigation on this software is restricted to the space-bar and the directional keys. The current webpage for Xanadu screams “don’t touch the mouse” which could prove to be a backseater.
There are softwares that had release dates much beyond their actual completion dates and they hacve also proved to be pretty good contenders in the market such as the Mac OS X that took a full four years after completion and the Windows Vista with a three year lag. Here’s to hoping that Xanadu will join the Queue to start a new revolution of its own.