"WWWC" redirects here. For the radio station, see
WWWC (AM).
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 March 2007, the W3C had 441 members. It is always open for
new organizations to join.
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, 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, 1991. 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 (e.g., 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 does not have a
certification program. A certification program is a process which has benefits and drawbacks; the W3C has decided, for now, that
it is not 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 fifteen
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...
Standards
W3C/IETF Standards (over Internet protocol suite):
See also
External links
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