This document was initially prepared by the Process Working Group (WG) of the World Wide Web Consortium. The Working Group was elected by the W3C Advisory Committee representatives on September 16, 1996 and consisted of the following individuals:
The Team Members involved in producing this document were:
| Process | Initiated by | Intended for | Time to next step | Next step |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Activity proposal | Director | Advisory Committee | Four weeks | Director's decision. If approved, Director issues calls for participation in Working Groups. Director sends comments received during the review period within one week after end of review. |
| Working Group Meeting announcement. | Working Group Chair | Working Group (notably Team contact) | Eight weeks for face-to-face. One week for remote. | Meeting, followed by publication of minutes. |
| Working Draft Last call | A Working Group Chair | All Working Group Chairs | Generally two to four weeks | Proposed Recommendation |
| Proposed Recommendation | Director | Advisory Committee | At least four weeks | Director's decision, which comes at least two weeks later. If approved, becomes a Recommendation. |
| Submission request | Member | W3C Team | After Submission package is validated by Team, one to four weeks. | Director's acknowledgment or rejection of request. |
| Call for nomination to Advisory Board | Director | Advisory Committee | Specified in call. | Call for votes from Director to Advisory Committee. Duration of election period specified in call. |
| Workshop announcement | W3C Team | Advisory Committee | Eight weeks if for information gathering, six weeks if to deal with pressing issues. | Workshop. |
The home page of the W3C Web site: http://www.w3.org/
The work of the IETF in places may overlap with the Activities of W3C. To allow clear progress, it is important for the role and domain of operation of each organization to be well defined and for communication between the two organizations to be efficient.
The IETF works in an entirely open manner: meetings are generally attended, by email or physically, by anyone who wishes to participate. W3C, by contrast, is a Consortium of organizations that pay a Membership fee to support its operation (Membership is open to any organization). W3C has a process for assigning defined groups of committed experts to solve specific tasks.
As a result of these differences, IETF working groups tend to be effective both for the collection of ideas from a wide community, and also, when a specification exists, for providing criticism from a wide community. W3C is effective at producing, in a timely fashion, a specification that is likely (though not guaranteed) to meet the needs of its Members and the community.
The IETF addresses specifically issues of Internet protocols while W3C addresses the architecture of the Web -- the global information space that is implemented by using Internet protocols and other tools.
W3C defines the Web, Web documents, and protocols for their access and distribution. W3C is the home of the HTML specifications, for which it brings together expertise in many areas outside the IETF. It also addresses the questions of intellectual ownership of documents, rating schemes for documents and the transport of labels (PICS), and in general the metadata that is information about documents.
W3C intends not to be involved with the specifications for IP, TCP, or DNS, for security at any of these levels; with SMTP or NNTP protocols.
The HTTP protocol has been developed with W3C participation in an IETF context. This is the area in which IETF experience has been very relevant, and W3C effort is provided in order to help attain a timely result.
The URI scheme is the central specification of the Web. Although it is fairly stable, its extension, where necessary, lies within the scope of W3C Activities. It would be appropriate for W3C to include a new naming scheme developed by a third party (or the IETF) into the URI specification.
Every effort must be made for open communication and cooperation between W3C and the IETF so that, for example, two versions of a specification do not evolve independently as a result of separate work. Such fragmentation thwarts the principle of interoperability so vital to W3C success.
This section summarizes the partnerships (potential or other) for the W3C with other organizations. A partnership begins with a written agreement between W3C and some other organization that specifies how the partners will participate in a given Activity.
Each table entry below addresses the following questions:
| Groups Relevant to W3C | Contribution to W3C or Web | Interested in working with W3C | Cost of Liaison | Special expertise from W3C |
| IETF Internet Engineering Task Force | Internet Infrastructure | Relationship needs to be focused, identify specific groups and people to meet. | High, knowledge of the organization is well known, but a close
relationship needs to be built.
Resource costs are high to participate in IETF Working Groups under their organizational structures rather than the W3C's. |
HTTP, URNs, Naming |
| ISO Standards - International
Organization for Standardization; includes national bodies standards |
ISO TC
46; Standards for Thesauri, Indexing, Bibliographies, and Searching.
ISO TC 68;
ISO TC 154;
ISO TC 187;
ISO/IEC WG2 SC2;
US Z39.50;
ANSI X9;
ISO/IEC JTC1; Information Processing, |
Yes, W3C was requested to provide liaison in HTML and graphics. | High, organization is complex. W3C Advisory Committee meeting June 1996 was
against following the PAS ISO procedure.
ISO organizations run at a different speed. |
HTML and graphics. |
| OMG Object Management Group Consortium | CORBA, IIOP, Enterprise Users | Strong Yes | Low | Architecture Areas, HTTP |
| OASIS-open | SGML Standardization and Expertise | Medium/Low | Low; primarily requires knowledge of relevant activities as they happen and making comments about possible changes to SGML. | HTML, XML |
| The Open Group (X/Open, Uniforum, OSF, SAG) | Active X, Validation Suites, Reference Implementations | Strong Yes | Low | Architecture and User Interface Areas, PICS |
| Unicode Consortium | Character encoding, character properties | Yes | Low | Markup, Language tagging, etc. |
| WAP Forum - Wireless Application Protocol | Protocols for mobile devices | Strong Yes | Low, because Mobile Interest Group already exists | See WAP Forum - W3C Cooperation White Paper |
| Government Regulators, European Commission, US Govt., G7,... | Regulatory Control | Depends | High, personal visits to each government and group are required. | Technology and Society Areas |