Below are some frequently asked questions about W3C Membership. If you have further questions about Membership, please refer to the W3C contact page.
Membership in W3C is open to all types of organizations (including commercial, educational and governmental entities) and individuals. Any entity that can sign the Membership Agreement can become a Member. Members may be either for-profit or not-for-profit organizations. Most Members invest significant resources into Web technologies. They may be developing Web-based products, using Web technologies as an enabling medium, conducting research on the Web, or developing specifications based on W3C work.
Yes. A list of current W3C Members is available on the W3C Web site.
Yes. The benefits of Membership participation flow downward to subsidiaries of Members. In the case of government agencies and departments, or educational institutions, this is interpreted to include sub-agencies, departments, laboratories, etc. When a subsidiary takes advantage of this provision, participation in W3C Activities must be coordinated through the Member's W3C Advisory Committee Representative. Authorized participants will officially represent the Member organization.
A subsidiary of a W3C Member may itself join W3C. While a subsidiary that is not itself a W3C Member must not make public claims that it is a W3C Member, the subsidiary may indicate publicly that it is the subsidiary of a W3C Member.
A Member may designate an employee of one of its subsidiaries to be its W3C Advisory Committee Representative. This might be desirable when the Member wishes its name to be listed, but a subsidiary is the focal point of all W3C activity.
Yes, by following the same procedure available to organizations. W3C does not have a class of Membership tailored to or priced for individuals. Indeed, the Membership fee is relatively small compared to the investment being made by the organization. Our processes are designed for organizational participation and we do not have the support structure to handle large numbers of individual members. Public participation in W3C is possible in a number of ways other than as an individual Member. Note that academics who are experts in a field may ask the Working Group Chair to be invited to join the Working Group as an Invited Expert.
Yes. Membership is open to other organizations that themselves have members ("membership organizations"). In this case, the benefits of W3C Membership generally only extend to the staff and officers of those organizations. Benefits do not flow through to the membership organization's own members.
Each W3C Member organization has one Advisory Committee Representative (AC Rep). This person should know enough about the Member organization's structure to forward detailed technical reviews to the proper person. It is more important to be involved in your organization's strategy than to have detailed technical knowledge.
The AC Rep receives official notices from W3C. Acting as a gatekeeper, the AC Rep responds to, or delegates response to W3C Calls for Review, Calls for Participation and Calls for Implementations, as well as other W3C announcements. AC Reps come to semi-annual Advisory Committee meetings and rub shoulders with other AC Reps. The AC Rep appoints participants in W3C Working Groups.
A history of W3C Member Agreements is available on the W3C Web site.
Yes. Participation in any Working Group is open to any W3C Member; this is one of the benefits of Membership.
The number of participants you may have in a group is determined by the group charter and your organization's own resource limits. The W3C Process itself imposes no limit.
The charter states the participation expectations. For many groups, participation means attending a weekly teleconference, attending face-to-face meetings in various locations several times per year, attending the Technical Plenary week (once per year), and following mailing list discussion. W3C welcomes participants to help in editing Recommendation Track documents. The Process Document includes more information about group participation.
At the current time, each Member and all three W3C Hosts sign each Member Agreement. The four copies allow each party to keep a copy of the fully executed Member Agreement. In the future, W3C may try to reduce the number of signatures required from W3C, but at the current time, signatures are required from each W3C Host.
Yes. Through the W3C Supporters Program, individuals and organizations can help support W3C operations through financial contributions and donations of goods. We welcome your support.
Yes. Below we describe how W3C applies its process to membership by Projects and how they join W3C. W3C also encourages the partners of a Project to join W3C in their own right.
The target Project for this type of Membership is multi-partner, government-funded, time-limited, and unincorporated (such as an EU-funded Project). The Project is considered a "Membership organization" and participation in W3C is thus governed by paragraph three of section 2.1.1 of the Process Document. In light of the special nature of such Projects, the need to preserve the value of W3C Membership, and the need to maintain the integrity of the W3C Patent Policy, these memberships are subject to the following additional conditions. Note: There is no precise definition of "Project"; W3C reserves the right to review all such applications.
If one organization (call it "A") wishes to join W3C and is more than 50% owned by another organization ("B"), the Membership fee that "A" pays is the greater of the two applicable Membership fees (for "A" and "B"). If "B" would pay the higher Membership fee, it is thus recommended that "B" join so that all of its subsidiaries have access to W3C Member benefits.
Copyright © 2004-2008 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark, document use and software licensing rules apply. Your interactions with this site are in accordance with our public and Member privacy statements.