Ted Nelson had really good ideas, but he stood in his own way.

He wanted to build a closed-source system that he owned and controlled. He was a bad project leader and got nowhere. His patents prevented others from using zigzag structures. Decades later, when some people wanted to build an open-source GZigZag, he first said it was okay to use the name, then turned sour on it and prevented them from using it.

If someone wants to do it again, they shouldn't involve Ted Nelson in any way our use anything he has control over, whether a trademark or a patent.

The Curse of Xanadu https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/

Slightly off topic but I'd like to point the distinction between the contents of that article with the latest stuff on the page side. It's not bad just the same thing you see in every news site.

Wired surely went full corpo didn't they?