World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop standards for the World Wide Web. W3C's mission is: "To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web". W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software, and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web. The Consortium is headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the original creator of the World Wide Web and primary author of the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and HTML (HyperText Markup Language) specifications, the principal technologies that form the basis of the Web.

Related Topics:
Consortium - World Wide Web - Tim Berners-Lee - URL - HTTP - HTML - Specification

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The consortium was initially 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 incompatibilities 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.

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In accord with the W3C Process Document, a Recommendation progresses through the maturity levels of Working Draft (WD), Candidate Recommendation (CR), and Proposed Recommendation (PR), culminating ultimately as a 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 third edition). W3C also publishes various kinds of informative Notes which are not intended to be treated as standards.

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The Consortium leaves it up to manufacturers to follow the Recommendations. Many of its standards define levels of conformance, which are required for the developers to follow. 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.

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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 without the risk of creating more drawbacks for the community than benefits.

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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). 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..

Related Topics:
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory - European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics - Sophia Antipolis - France - Keio University - Japan

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