MIT/LCS, the Laboratory of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control, have joined forces to host the International World-Wide Web Consortium.
The purposes of the Consortium are:
MIT/LCS and INRIA's role is to provide the vendor-neutral architectural, engineering and administrative leadership necessary to:
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World-Wide Web while working at CERN (Switzerland), joined MIT/LCS, and is the Director of the Consortium. A Deputy-Director will be responsible for the team located at INRIA. An Advisory Committee is responsible for reviewing specification proposals, reviewing annual plans, assessing progress, and suggesting future directions.
The Consortium is financially self-supporting through membership fees. Membership in the Consortium is open to any operating organization. There are two membership categories: Full Member and Affiliate Member. The membership fee for a Full Member is One Hundred Fifty Thousand ($150,000.00) dollars, and for an Affiliate Member is Fifteen Thousand ($15,000.00) dollars. Organizations with gross sales in excess of $50 million per year must join as a Full Member. Other organizations, including educational institutions, may join as Full Members or Affiliate Members. Membership fees cover the first three years of the Consortium and are payable in equal annual installments.
The Consortium will be in operation through 1997. An extension of the Consortium will be decided by the members at the end of this period. Each member organization is entitled to place one individual on the Advisory Committee.
A variety of topics will be addressed by the Consortium. Areas to be investigated include:
The Consortium staff will maintain and distribute a collection of software and documentation. This collection will consist of specifications and sample implementations of approved standards, sample applications and other relevant software, and associated documentation.
Any organization will be allowed to incorporate the reference software and documentation produced by the Consortium into products at any time after the materials have been released. The Consortium will also collect and distribute software contributed by other individuals and organizations as well as by member organizations. The contents and release schedule for the contributed software collection will be determined by the Consortium's Director.
The Consortium will sponsor an annual conference, open to the public, to promote the exchange of technical information about the World-Wide-Web. Workshops will also be given by experts from the international technical community.
contact:
Jean-François Abramatic
Director of Development, INRIA
Telephone: +33 1 39 63 54 63
Fax: +33 1 39 54 38 50
E-mail: Jean-Francois.Abramatic@inria.fr
or:
Albert Vezza
Associate Director, MIT/LCS
Telephone: 617 253-0531
Fax: 617 258-8682
E-mail: av@lcs.mit.edu
URL: http://www.lcs.mit.edu
