---
name: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
type: standards_body
status: running
version: 1994.lts
released: 1994-10-01
maintainer: Tim Berners-Lee (founding), now a Director Emeritus situation
dependencies:
  - browsers
  - academic_patience
  - corporate_consensus
  - the_internet
  - good_intentions
license: Royalty-Free (W3C RF), with asterisks
tags:
  - web
  - standards
  - interoperability
  - committees
  - html
  - css
  - xml
  - slow_governance
---

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

What it actually is

A treaty organization for the web, where browser vendors, academics, and corporations gather to argue about what a button should be, and then publish a PDF about it four years later.

How it works

Someone notices the web is broken in a new and interesting way.
A Working Group is formed. Chairs are appointed. A mailing list is created.
Drafts are published: First Public Working Draft, then many more Working Drafts, then a Candidate Recommendation, then a Proposed Recommendation.
Years pass. Some members leave. A browser ships the feature anyway.
The Recommendation is published. It now describes what browsers already do.

The process is not fast. The process is not supposed to be fast. The process is consensus.

Features

Specifications: HTML, CSS, SVG, ARIA, WebAssembly, and hundreds of others in varying states of browser support and existential crisis
Working Groups: open to members who pay dues, which scale by organization size. MIT pays less than Google. This is noted without further comment.
TAG (Technical Architecture Group): a small group that thinks about whether the web is going in a good direction. They publish findings. The web continues.
WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative): produces WCAG, the spec that turns accessibility from a moral obligation into a checklist. This is both its power and its tragedy.
Royalty-Free Patent Policy: contributors agree not to patent-troll the specs. Mostly holds.

Known bugs

Consensus deadlock: when two large browser vendors disagree, the spec waits. The spec has been waiting on some things since 2009.
Membership capture: large corporations fund the W3C and participate heavily. Small developers do not. The resulting specs reflect this imbalance in ways that are obvious once you notice them.
DRM incident (2017): the W3C approved Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) over significant protest, including a formal objection from the EFF, who then resigned their membership. The event left a mark. See: digital rights management.
Vague normative language: "SHOULD" and "MAY" do a lot of heavy lifting in specs where "MUST" would have been more honest.

Changelog

Version	Note
1994	Founded at MIT. Tim Berners-Lee decides standards should be open. This is the right call.
1997	HTML 4. Things are looking organized.
1998	XML arrives. The web briefly believes everything will be XML.
2000s	XHTML 2.0 developed in parallel with what developers actually needed. WHATWG forks HTML.
2012	HTML5 co-developed with WHATWG. The relationship is complicated.
2019	W3C and WHATWG sign a memorandum. HTML is now officially a living standard. The W3C version is the WHATWG version. Peace, of a kind.
2022	W3C becomes a public-interest nonprofit. Previously it was hosted across MIT, ERCIM, Keio, and Beihang.

FAQ

Is the W3C part of the government? No. It has no enforcement power. A browser can ignore a spec entirely. Several have, historically. See: Internet Explorer.

Do I need to read the specs? You need to read MDN, which is what the specs wish they were.

Who actually controls HTML now? WHATWG. The W3C publishes the snapshot. The river flows from elsewhere.