Consensus and the Web
Roy Rada, Carl F. Cargill, J. Klensin · Communications of the ACM · 1998
The article reports that the Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) has approved the Sun Microsystems Inc. application to be a Publicly Available Specifications submitter. JTC1 is responsible for information technology standards as part of ISO and lEC and represents the highest level of international, official accord about what constitutes a standard in information technology. The U.S. and China voted against acceptance of the Sun application because they feared the consensus character of standards development would be reduced to achieve speed. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendations may have broad impact. Founded in October 1994, W3C intends to lead the Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote the Web's evolution and ensure interoperability. W3C standards process has been the source of some controversy. Claims have been made that one member has manipulated or completely controlled the process for a given standard. The economic and social consequences of Web standards go beyond those of a publishing medium.