The inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee unveiled the World Wide Web Foundation (WWWF), a new body with a mission to maintain a single, free and open Web, expand the Web’s capability and robustness, and extend its benefits to all people on the planet.
The Foundation wants the Web to be extended, enabling all people to share knowledge, access services, conduct commerce, participate in good governance, and communicate in creative ways.
The new body kicks off with a $5 million seed grant over five years from the US philanthropic body, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
“The Web is a tremendous platform for innovation, but we face a number of challenges to making it more useful, in particular to people in underserved communities,” said Berners-Lee, in his speech to launch the WWWF. “Through this new initiative, we hope to develop an international ecosystem that will help shape the future Web. A more inclusive Web will benefit us all.”
Berners-Lee is Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and co-Director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), the two organisations that have helped pull together the WWWF.
With the backing of Berners-Lee, the new Foundation puts itself in the position of being able to improve the Web by bringing together existing communities, governments, non-governmental organisations, and other stakeholders. It will pursue its objectives by funding projects around the world in three strategically integrated programmes related to research, technology, and social development.
The social development efforts will focus initially on underserved populations. WWWF will identify benefits of the Web for these communities, and issues of access to, and availability of, relevant, usable, and useful content. There will be a particular focus on efforts to develop services related to better health care, nutrition, education, and emergency relief.
“The free flow of information is of paramount importance to communities in a democracy and maintaining the World Wide Web free is critical for the future of that free flow,” said Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation's president and CEO.
The World Wide Web Foundation is in the initial planning phase.
“I would like to invite those who share this vision for the Web to become founding donors,” said Steve Bratt, CEO of the World Wide Web Foundation. “With their support, we plan to launch the Foundation in early 2009 with an announcement of the first concrete steps toward fulfilling its mission.”
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