WORLD WIDE WEB CONSORTIUM

Domain	Definition
Computing	World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) The main standards body for the World-Wide Web. W3C works with the global community to establish international standards for client and server protocols that enable on-line commerce and communications on the Internet. It also produces reference software. W3C was created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on 25 October 1994. Netscape Communications Corporation was a founding member. The Consortium is run by MIT LCS and INRIA, in collaboration with CERN where the web originated. W3C is funded by industrial members but its products are freely available to all. The director is Tim Berners-Lee who invented the World-Wide Web at the Center for European Particle Research (CERN). Home (http://www.w3.org/). (1996-11-03). Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Specialty Definition: World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is a consortium that produces standards for the World Wide Web. It is headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the original creator of the HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and HTML (HyperText Markup Language) on which the Web is based.

A standard goes through the stages Working Draft, Last Call, Proposed Recommendation and Candidate Recommendation. It ends as a Recommendation. It's up to the manufactures to follow the recommendations which is the case for many of them.

See also: Cascading Style Sheets, DOM, SVG, XML, WAI