ISOC supports W3C on Internet evolution

The Internet Society (ISOC) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have revealed an undisclosed donation from ISOC for the purpose of advancement of W3C evolution especially creating open Web standards, for the next three years.

President and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Internet Society, Lynn St. Amour and Director, W3C, Dr Tim Berners-Lee, in a joint public statement made available to ITRealms Online, cited an instance of strongly aligned views on the value of an open global Internet and support for the current Internet governance and management model.

It is in this regard that ISOC pledged to support W3C efforts to implement a more agile, inclusive and flexible organizational structure.

Commenting on the development, St. Amour noted that ISOC and W3C have worked together for years in a number of projects, and have deeply shared values about the Internets development.

"Our support to the W3C in their transition efforts demonstrates ISOC's commitment to ensuring the Internet continues to be a global platform for innovation. What's at stake is the Internet's openness, which is a critical enabler of new products and services to billions of users worldwide," he said.

And for Berners-Lee, ISOC and W3C have a long history of cooperation and the Internet ecosystem has benefited from the shared yet independent voices.

"The W3C staff, Members, and community continue to work on making W3C more relevant and valuable to the Web and Internet communities. ISOC support will allow W3C to evolve its structure to ensure we continue to forge solid working relationships with the increasing numbers of developers and users, worldwide," he asserted.

Industry observers opined that the announcement reflected the two organizations' shared aim of ensuring the continued growth and accessibility of the global Internet and Web, as well as the stewardship responsibilities to ensure continued benefit to end users globally.

Further, the two organizations assured on their consistency in operating independently so as to continuously maintain their long-standing, informal collaboration.

A non-profit organization founded in 1992, ISOC provides leadership in Internet related standards, education and policy, as well as serves as the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet's premier technical standards body. With offices in Washington D.C. and Geneva, Switzerland, it is dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world.

W3C on the other hand, is an international consortium with membership organizations, primarily in pursuit of its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines designed to ensure long-term growth for the Web with over 350 organizational members Consortium.

W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan, among other offices worldwide.

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