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c o n s o r t i u m

Meanwhile, Ari Luotonen, the Finnish student from the Erwise project whom Robert had brought to CERN, was productizing CERN's HTTP code. He made it easy to install, with documentation on how to use it. When his term as a CERN student came to an end, he joined Netscape to work on its server software. The other student at CERN, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, joined us at the consortium. He would be one of the people who would do the core work on the next upgrade of the hypertext protocol, HTTP 1.1.

As members signed up for the consortium, they advised us about what they wanted to address first. One of the top priorities was network security. Information, such as credit-card numbers, sent over the Web needed to be safeguarded. Netscape was particularly interested because it had a deal looming with mammoth MCI to distribute Netscape's browser on MCI's new Internet service, due to begin in January. Netscape's software, called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), would protect credit-card purchases on MCI's planned online shopping mall. Seeing SSL as a competitive advantage and feeling that W3C was not yet really up and running, Netscape decided not to wait, and developed the software fairly independently. This was one of the first programs that allowed electronic commerce (e-commerce) to gain credibility.

With so much new, autumn passed quickly. Suddenly it was December 1994. In three short days, huge events took place that would forever alter the Web's future: The consortium members met for the first time; Netscape released the commercial version of its browser; and CERN decided after all not to be a W3C host site. That bobsled I had been pushing from the starting gate for so long was now cruising downhill.

On December 14 at LCS the World Wide Web Consortium held the first meeting of its Advisory Committee. The meeting was very friendly and quite small, with only about twenty-five people. Competitors in the marketplace, the representatives came together