Everything about The World Wide Web Consortium totally explained
The
World Wide Web Consortium (
W3C) is the main international
standards organization for the
World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or W3). It is arranged as a
consortium where member organizations maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the
W3. As of February 2008, the W3C had 434 members.
W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web.
W3C is headed by
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the first web browser and the primary author of the original
URL (Uniform Resource Locator),
HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and
HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
specifications, the principal technologies that form the basis of the World Wide Web.
History
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded by Tim Berners-Lee after he left the European Organization for Nuclear Research (
CERN) in October, 1994. It was founded at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT/LCS) with support from the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) -- which had pioneered the
Internet -- and the
European Commission.
W3C was created to ensure compatibility and agreement among industry members in the adoption of new standards. Prior to its creation, incompatible versions of HTML were offered by different vendors, increasing the potential for inconsistency between web pages. The consortium was created to get all those vendors to agree on a set of core principles and components which would be supported by everyone.
It was originally intended that CERN host the European branch of W3C; however, CERN wished to focus on particle physics, not information technology. In April 1995 the
Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (
INRIA) became the European host of W3C, with
Keio University becoming the Japanese branch in September 1996. Starting in 1997, W3C created regional offices around the world; as of October 2007 it has sixteen World Offices covering
Australia, the Benelux countries (
the Netherlands,
Luxemburg, and
Belgium),
China,
Finland,
Germany and
Austria,
Greece,
Hungary,
India,
Ireland,
Israel,
Italy,
Japan,
South Korea,
Korea,
Morocco,
South Africa,
Spain,
Sweden, and the
United Kingdom.
In January 2003, the European host was transferred from INRIA to the
European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (
ERCIM), an organization that represents European national computer science laboratories.
Recommendations and certifications
In accord with the W3C Process Document, a Recommendation progresses through five maturity levels:
- Working Draft (WD)
- Last Call Working Draft
- Candidate Recommendation (CR)
- Proposed Recommendation (PR)
- W3C Recommendation (REC)
A Recommendation may be updated by separately published
Errata until enough substantial edits accumulate, at which time a new
edition of the Recommendation may be produced (for example,
XML is now in its fourth edition). W3C also publishes various kinds of informative
Notes which are not intended to be treated as standards.
W3C leaves it up to manufacturers to follow the Recommendations. Many of its standards define levels of conformance, which the developers must follow if they wish to label their product W3C-compliant. Like any standards of other organizations, W3C recommendations are sometimes implemented partially. The Recommendations are under a royalty-free patent license, allowing anyone to implement them.
Unlike the
ISOC and other international standards bodies, the W3C doesn't have a certification program. A certification program is a process which has benefits and drawbacks; the W3C has decided, for now, that it isn't suitable to start such a program owing to the risk of creating more drawbacks for the community than benefits.
Administration
The Consortium is jointly administered by the
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in the USA, the
European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) (in
Sophia Antipolis,
France), and
Keio University (in
Japan). The W3C also has World Offices in sixteen regions around the world. The W3C Offices work with their regional Web communities to promote W3C technologies in local languages, broaden W3C's geographical base, and encourage international participation in W3C Activities.
Membership
The Consortium is governed by its membership, which comprises about 400 organizations. The list of members is available to the public. Members include only businesses, nonprofit organizations, universities, and governmental entities. There is no provision for individual membership.
Membership requirements are transparent except for one requirement. An application for membership must be reviewed and approved by W3C. Many guidelines and requirements are stated in detail, but there's no final guideline about the process or standards by which membership might be finally approved or denied.
The cost of membership is given on a sliding scale, depending on the character of the organization applying and the country in which it's located. Countries are categorized by the World Bank's most recent grouping by GNI ("Gross National Income") per capita.
Fees Schedule for 2007
European, Middle Eastern, and African organizations pay dues denominated in Euros, as follows:
The fee charged to For-profit companies with annual gross revenues exceeding €51,000,000, was €65,000, regardless of location.
The fee charged to for-profit companies with annual gross revenues under €51,000,000 but greater than the "Other organization" cap (see below) was €6,500, regardless of location.
Smaller and non-profit organizations located in lower GNI countries enjoy two price advantages:
- In High Income Countries (HIC) such as France and Israel, non-profit organizations and for-profit organizations with AGR under €51,000,000 are charged €6,500.
- In Upper Middle Income Countries (UMC) such as Poland and South Africa, nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies with AGR under €30,600,000 pay €3,900.
- In Lower Middle Income Countries (LMC) such as Ukraine and Jordan, nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies with AGR under €15,300,000 pay €1,950.
- In Lower Income Countries (LIC) Pakistan and Kenya, nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies with AGR under €7,650,000 pay €975.
Similar scales apply to dues denominated in yen for some Asian countries, and US dollars for all others.
Criticism
Domination by large organizations
Many reputable sources have criticized the W3C as being dominated by larger organizations and thus writing standards that represent their interests. For example, a member of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG) complained that:
The process is stacked in favour of multinationals with expense accounts who can afford to talk on the phone for two hours a week and jet to world capitals for meetings.
A similar criticism, responding to large software company complaints about the slow pace of W3C's formulation of XML/web services standards, appeared in Cnet's news.com in 2002:
"I'm not convinced that developers are too bothered," said Edd Dumbill, editor of XML.com, who has worked as a software developer on Web services. "I think developers are being poorly served by the fact that the big companies have dominated the work of the W3C over the last year. The W3C does more or less what its members tell it to. So I don't have a huge amount of sympathy for the complaints of large companies."
Standards
W3C/IETF Standards (over Internet protocol suite):
Further Information
Get more info on 'World Wide Web Consortium'.
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