World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main standards body for the 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.

History
W3C was established by the (MIT) on October 25, 1994. Netscape Communications was a founding member. The Consortium is run by (formerly ) and, in collaboration with the  (CERN), where the web originated. W3C is funded by industrial members but its products are freely available to all. The director is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web at CERN.

Despite being a web consortium that is world-wide and not a world consortium for the wide web, the World Wide Web Consortium has chosen to omit the hyphen that might be expected of a standards body, especially one directed by Berners-Lee.