[governance] W3C was Re: [] reality check on economics

Tue May 22 09:23:14 EDT 2012

Hi,

First, I personally prefer the IETF model as well. I highlight the W3C because....they do an incredibly good job of staying off everyone's radar screen, even though a lot of the action happens there. So if we're talking real world of Internet governance we should notice the gorilla in the corner with more impact than ITU on how the net operates, today, for users worldwide. Forget IPv6 and the Chinese net; end users of either run to the same W3C specs.

Even if Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a good guy so noone wants to pick on him.  Coming up with the web gives you a lifetime free pass I guess ; ).

Second, of W3C's 366 current members, there are a range of major multinationals, government agencies, universities and ngo's like center for democracy and technology....so relatively MSH. Albeit, a membership-based, dues-paying MSH club. Just go to their website and check out the list.

Fees for orgs from the first country listed, Afghanistan:
For-profit organization that has annual gross revenue, as measured by the most recent audited statement, of greater than or equal to 50,000,000 USD.    68,500 USD
For-profit organization that has annual gross revenue, as measured by the most recent audited statement, of greater than or equal to 7,500,000 USD and less than 50,000,000 USD.        7,900 USD
All other organizations, including non-profit organizations and government agencies.    953 USD

Fees for orgs from US:
Organization Type in United States (HIC category<http://www.worldbank.org/data/countryclass/classgroups.htm>)   Annual Fee for Memberships Starting 2012-04-01
For-profit organization that has annual gross revenue, as measured by the most recent audited statement, of greater than or equal to 50,000,000 USD.    68,500 USD
All other organizations, including non-profit organizations and government agencies.    7,900 USD
Enterprises and non-profits with 10 or fewer employees, who are not also membership organizations, revenues less than 3,000,000 USD and have never been a W3C Member. This fee only valid for the first two years of W3C Membership.    2,250 USD

You will note that if you're a business, worldwide, of some scale, the fee is flat rate. If you're a CS organization of some scale, based in a high income nation, fees are a bit lower than ITU. Coincidentally I am sure.

Third, when they're doing something major, like cooking up XML or HTML5, that means a lot of public/user outreach and requests for feedback beyond the bona fide club members, and individual experts can get in to one or another activity without paying - dues.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting we lay off the IETF, which is indeed a great model to look to.

But the elephant in that room is that it got its semi-formal start with some cross-subsidies from the same USG agencies folks on this list are trying to get the net away from; and now for past decades has support for its activities from ISOC.

So yeah IETF is free for all and has a great model for developing internetworking protocols; but someone somewhere is paying the ISOC dues and donations to help keep the thing virtually up and running.

Both are preferrable of course from a CS view to the states-only, businesses tolerated, cs stay away attitudes and practices of ITU and most other UN orgs, but let's not pretend there is a free lunch at IETF, either.

And, let's not forget that a dues-paying club of major firms (and others) is setting the specs we're using to...do pretty much anything on the web.

Lee
________________________________
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] on behalf of Avri Doria [avri at acm.org]
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 10:31 AM
To: IGC
Subject: [governance] W3C was Re: [] reality check on economics

On 21 May 2012, at 09:43, Lee W McKnight wrote:

>  I'd suggest W3C has more sessions newbies could get their feet wet with.

Isn't W3C a membership group primarily of businesses (they allow individuals, but have no individual class of membership and the dues are the same - starts at 2500 USFD and goes up 7900 USD after 2 years)?  While they have some sideline groups that are open to non members, their WG, the focal point of their work, are pretty much only open to members (primarily business) and to a few invitees.

I have never seen them as a multistakeholder group, but rather as an industry group.

Please correct me if I am wrong, as a non member I have not delved very deeply except for once when I needed to understand the working group structure and their decision processes in a comparative study - but this was a few years ago.

avri
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