World Wide Web Foundation is Shutting Down (theregister.com) 28
After fifteen years of fighting to make the web safer and more accessible, the World Wide Web Foundation is shutting down. From a report: In a letter shared via the organization's website, co-founders Sir Tim Berners-Lee -- inventor of the World Wide Web -- and Rosemary Leith explain that the organization's mission has been somewhat accomplished and a new battle needs to be waged. When the foundation was founded in 2009, just over 20 percent of the world had access to the web and relatively few organizations were trying to change that, say Sir Tim and Leith. A decade and a half later, with nearly 70 percent of the world online, there are many similar non-governmental organizations trying to make the web more accessible and affordable.
The two founders thank their supporters over the years who "have enabled us to move the needle in a big way" with regard to access and affordability. But the issues facing the web have changed, they insist, and the foundation believes other advocacy groups can take it from here. Chief among the more pressing problems, claim Sir Tim and Leith, is the social media business model that commoditized user data and concentrates power with platforms, contrary to Sir Tim's original vision for the web. To address that threat, Sir Tim intends to dismantle his foundation so he can focus on decentralized technology. "We, along with the Web Foundation board, have been asking ourselves where we can have the most impact in the future," the authors say. "The conclusion we have reached is that Tim's passion on restoring power over and control of data to individuals and actively building powerful collaborative systems needs to be the highest priority going forward. In order to best achieve this, Tim will focus his efforts to support his vision for the Solid Protocol and other decentralized systems."
The two founders thank their supporters over the years who "have enabled us to move the needle in a big way" with regard to access and affordability. But the issues facing the web have changed, they insist, and the foundation believes other advocacy groups can take it from here. Chief among the more pressing problems, claim Sir Tim and Leith, is the social media business model that commoditized user data and concentrates power with platforms, contrary to Sir Tim's original vision for the web. To address that threat, Sir Tim intends to dismantle his foundation so he can focus on decentralized technology. "We, along with the Web Foundation board, have been asking ourselves where we can have the most impact in the future," the authors say. "The conclusion we have reached is that Tim's passion on restoring power over and control of data to individuals and actively building powerful collaborative systems needs to be the highest priority going forward. In order to best achieve this, Tim will focus his efforts to support his vision for the Solid Protocol and other decentralized systems."
Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, that's fucking rich, isn't it?
30 year WWW birthday party headlines (Score:3)
- 30 years - JavaScript, still faulty and broken but loved by all
- 30 years - Almost got desktop app functionality on the web
TIL it's only been fifteen years of WWWF (Score:3)
TIL it's only been fifteen years of WWWF.
I've been doing web stuff since 1993.
Re: (Score:2)
You were supposed to confuse it with W3C and some big names got paychecks to push corporate interests.
AIUI
The WWF (and Tim) had already "sold out" (Score:5, Informative)
In 2017, ignoring all criticism and all ongoing negotiations, Tim and the WWF pushed an HTML5 standard with DRM, with zero protections or safeties.
That betrayal of all the principles of the open web, that sellout to the mafiAAAs might have been what killed the WWF, with today just being the closing of the mausoleum.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/amid-unprecedented-controversy-w3c-greenlights-drm-web [eff.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the reasons given for the shutting seem fishy to me. Maybe they plan to get involved in conflicting endeavours.
Re:The WWF (and Tim) had already "sold out" (Score:4, Informative)
Tim isn't wrong though. Facebook and co are basically exactly what M$ wanted to achieve with MSN. Exclude the open Web in favour of a proprietary closed garden. That's pretty much how all phone apps work now.
The WWF (Score:3)
I thought the WWF had to change its name to WWE because the giant Panda crowd already had the trademark on those initials.
Re:The WWF (and Tim) had already "sold out" (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not all that simple.
Tim's argument is that you have the choice to either have Flash, Silverlight, etc. for playing DRM that are quite incompatible, e.g. with rare operation systems, don't integrate well with browsers and are know for security issues, or you have a clean API that allows modules that are purely for DRM decoding to be used. He argued, that you can assume that streaming sites wouldn't stop using DRM, but rather use plugins or own applications than streaming unencrypted.
You can debate if the standard is a good idea, because their are good counterarguments. But Tim isn't the bad guy here, but only has a more practical approach to make things work instead of insisting on principles at the cost of possibly worse outcomes, like having to install one streaming app per streaming website.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. You want streaming content, it would either be apps that are platform limited, or in the web browser - either through a plugin or through the DRM addon.
Now, perhaps the app method was better- in which case the web would become just another App Store - distributing apps because that's where you'd get content. Instead of heading to Netflix and viewing a movie in your browser, you'd head to Netflix, where it would tell you to install the Netflix app and then launch it where you can interact with it.
Wa
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is: How would one make sure that the companies "We require you to use DRM addons" approach is so uncomfortable for users that the companies have pressure to stream without DRM? Requiring the extra app is no problem for large companies like Netflix. The small competitor will suffer, though. So the browser has no option to make the users boykott DRM. The initiative has to come from somewhere else.
Positive is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Great (Score:3)
Safer and More Accessible ? (Score:2)
Good thing their done, my eyes cant roll any more without falling out.
Re:Safer and More Accessible ? (Score:4, Informative)
He's technically right. Effectively everyone in the country has access to the internet. Whether it is affordable is another matter, but access is everywhere except the most remote or hard to reach places.
Also, with your low ID, you certainly rememer the early days where there were competing "standards" for web development because of the browser wars. Netscape and IE (among others) had differing views on what those standards should be which is why sites needed to coded for each browser. Some sites wouldn't even work properly if you used the "wrong" browser.
Then there are those with visual impairments. Think of how much their lives have changed by being able to access the web in a coherent format. The early days probably weren't too bad because web sites were simple (and functional), but with all the bullshit needed today to put up even the most basic site screen reading software has had to rapidly adapt. And in came standards for accessibility.
Safer is another matter and clearly not correct.
Also, *they're*.
Re: (Score:2)
In the end it was google Chrome's way or the highway as far as standards.. They did that too? wow.
Kind of (Score:4, Insightful)
Chief among the more pressing problems, claim Sir Tim and Leith, is the social media business model that commoditized user data and concentrates power with platforms, contrary to Sir Tim's original vision for the web.
I think the proverbial man from Mars would say that the chief problem now is censorship and loss of practical anonymity.
(Which is tangentially related to what he is saying, of course - it's easier for The Party to lean on a few behemoths like Facebook than on a million blogs.)
They were redundant non authoritative (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't even understand what they did?
The WHATWG is the actual authority on the HTML standard.
That's really sad. (Score:2)
It means the web has shrunk to whomever controls/implements web browser protocols, and a voice for the users/technology is now gone. Then again, perhaps the era of the web browser as a independent information dissemination device has also moved on; who needs open protocols at that point?
Re: (Score:2)
I think this was the point of Gemini [wikipedia.org]. The web has been polluted with all kinds of crap. Time to move on.
The World Wide Web Foundation is not the W3C (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Both the World Wide Web Foundation and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) were founded by Tim Berners-Lee. He's just shutting down his private charity. The W3C is not going anywhere.
I'm surprised something like this had to be posted. You'd think the usual slashdot reader would already know the difference.