Next: The future of Up: History and evolution Previous: Origins of the

Current mechanisms for the Web's development

Conferences have provided a fertile meeting place for developers. A forum for finding out about recent developments and for the exchange of ideas, the energy they generate often provides the impetus for new advances. The first Web conference was held in Geneva in June 1994 and was oversubscribed, with over 300 delegates.

A working group of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force, part of the Internet Society) was established after the first conference to draw up standards for HTML. It was decided to draw up a standard that defines current practice before moving on to introduce new features in future versions of HTML. IETF working groups are open to anyone, and work by soliciting and debating ideas, rather than by drawing up specifications. Discussion usually takes place by email and at conference fringe meetings. Proposed Internet standards are ratified at IETF meetings, which are held three times a year. In contrast to the working methods of the national and international standards organizations, Internet standards are agreed by a combination of demonstrating working code and achieving the consensus of the meeting. It is expected that HTML version 2.0 will be ratified at the December 1994 meeting.

A second conference was organized by the NCSA in Chicago in October 1994, attended by 1300 people. Again this was vastly oversubscribed. At the October conference another IETF working group was set up, to work on improving the functionality and performance of HTTP. At the time of the second conference further conferences were already being planned and a committee was established, with membership drawn from the organizers of the first, second and third conferences, to coordinate future conferences which will take place twice a year for the foreseeable future. The third conference is scheduled for April 1995 in Darmstadt, Germany.

August and September 1994 saw the announcement of the formation of the W3 Organization (W3O), a collaboration between CERN and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the W3 Consortium (W3C), an industry consortium established along similar lines to the X Window Consortium. Chaired by Tim Berners Lee, W3C is based at CERN and at MIT, which is also the home of the X Window Consortium. Membership of the consortium is drawn mainly from industry and research organizations. The cost of membership, at US$ 50,000 for large organizations and US$ 5,000 for small, puts it beyond the means of most private individuals. W3C's purpose is to coordinate the development of Web technology and software with a view to ensuring compatibility throughout the industry. Software developed by or for the consortium will eventually be freely available, but members will have advance access to it.

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.