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c o n s o r t i u m

the Laboratory for Computer Science and sites in Europe and Asia would produce specifications and sample code, which members—and anyone else, for that matter—could pick up and use for any purpose, including commercial products, at no charge. Consortium funding from dues (and, initially, public research money) would underwrite these efforts.

There also would be the Advisory Committee, comprising one official representative from each member organization, who would serve as the primary liaison between that organization and W3C. The committee's role would be to offer advice on the overall progress and direction of the consortium. I would be the consortium's director; Al would be chairman.

Most of the organizations that were signing up were companies interested primarily in advancing the technology for their own benefit. The competitive nature of the group would drive the developments, and always bring everyone to the table for the next issue. Yet members also knew that collaboration was the most efficient way for everyone to grab a share of a rapidly growing pie.

Although the consortium was seen as primarily an industry group, the U.S. and European governments were supportive. In fact, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency provided seed money, in part because we would be building bridges between academic research and industry. Martin Bangemann, the European Commission commissioner, held a meeting of the European governments, which decided to support CERN's coordination of Europe's part of the consortium.

Not surprisingly, one of my first steps at MIT was to set up a Web server. I took a copy of all the existing Web documentation and specifications from the info.cern.ch server at CERN. The new web address was http://www.w3.org. CERN would maintain info.cern.ch as a forwarding address.

No sooner had I arrived at MIT than I was off to Edinburgh, Scotland, for the next European Conference on Hypermedia Technology.