APPENDIX 1 Description of the MIT W3 Consortium

1. Organization and Structure.

The purposes of the Consortium are to support the advancement of information technology in the field of networking, graphics and user interfaces by evolving the World Wide Web toward a true information infrastructure, and to encourage cooperation in the industry through the promotion and development of standard interfaces in the information environment known as the "World Wide Web." MIT's role is to provide the vendor-neutral architectural, engineering and administrative leadership required to make this work. The Consortium will begin operation October 1, 1994

The Consortium is financially self-supporting, through membership fees. Membership in the Consortium is open to any operating organization agreeing to the terms of this agreement. These terms apply to membership during the period beginning October 1, 1994 through September 30, 1997. If the organization is itself a consortium, user society, or otherwise has members or sponsors, the rights and privileges granted under this agreement extend only to the paid employees of the organization, not to the members or sponsors.

2. Membership.

a. Categories.

There are two membership categories: Full Member and Affiliate Member . An organization whose controlling corporation has gross sales in excess of $50 million per year must join as a Full Member. Other organizations, including educational institutions, may join as Full Members or Affiliates Members.

b. Fees.

The total Membership fee for becoming a Full Member is One Hundred Fifty Thousand ($150,000) Dollars, and the total for becoming an Affiliate Member is Fifteen Thousand ($15,000) Dollars. If an organization joins during the first year of the consortium, one-third of the total fee is due at the time the organization joins, and one-third is due October 1, 1995 and October 1, 1996. If an organization joins during the second year, two-thirds of the fee is due at the time the organization joins and the remaining third is due on October, 1996. If an organization joins during the third year of the W3 Consortium, the total fee is due at the time the organization joins.

c. Subsidiaries of Members.

If the organization has subsidiaries, the rights and privileges granted under this agreement shall extend to all subsidiaries the voting stock of which is directly or indirectly at least fifty percent (50%) owned or controlled by the organization.

3. Administration.

a. Director.

The Consortium has an MIT-employed Director (the "Director"), who acts as chief architect for all specifications produced by the Consortium. The present Director is Tim Berners-Lee, who is the original architect of the W3 protocol and has been directing its development since its inception at CERN.

b. MIT Staff.

The MIT staff of the Consortium will consist of the Director, approximately seven full-time engineers, and one support person. The staff are in the employ of MIT and its Laboratory for Computer Science ("LCS"), and report to the Director. Staff hiring is controlled by MIT. Staffing is expected to be complete by October 1, 1995, and will depend on the total amount of membership fees collected by MIT.

c. Integration within MIT.

The Consortium is administered within LCS, and the Consortium Director reports to the Director of LCS. An MIT Steering Committee sets overall policy and provides strategic guidance and review of the Consortium's activities; this committee includes the Director and Associate Director of LCS and the Consortium Director, plus other individuals from the MIT community. Inasmuch as MIT is conducting research on many aspects of the information infrastructure a technical committee shall be established to facilitate the links between MIT and other research worldwide, to the activities of the consortium. These links will take place primarily through the technical workshops described in Section 12

4. Collaboration.

MIT will collaborate with other organizations in the development of the W3 protocol. In particular, CERN in Europe, EIT and CommerceNet, OSF, NCSA, Spyglass, Inc., and others. Aspects of the W3 reference implementation may be developed by our collaborators under various cooperative arrangements.

5. Visiting Engineers.

Member organizations may volunteer to contribute staff on short term assignment to MIT for specific implementation efforts sponsored by the Consortium. If MIT has the resources to accept such staff, the visitors will be provided with unsalaried MIT appointments as Visiting Engineers. For the portion of their time assigned to Consortium activities, visitors will take their technical direction from the Director.

6. Advisory Committee.

a. Purpose.

MIT shall establish a committee (the "Advisory Committee"), the purpose of which is to move proposals through the Consortium review process, review annual plans, assess progress, and suggest future directions.

b. Appointment of Representatives.

Each member organization is entitled to place one individual on the Advisory Committee.

c. Meetings.

The Advisory Committee will meet approximately twice per year. Meetings for other activities are scheduled as they are needed, and need not take place at MIT.

7. Standards Review Process and Procedure.

Every proposal for a new standard goes through the following process, unless an alternative process is approved by the Director and the Advisory Committee.

To be considered by the Consortium, a proposal must be sponsored by a member organization and must include a complete draft specification of interfaces and functionality. The draft specification need not originate through a Consortium-sponsored design process. The sponsoring organization should present the proposal to the Consortium Director for formal consideration, and designate an individual who will act as an Architect for the specification. The Director then ensures that the proposal is circulated to all Advisory Committee representatives, and a one month trial review is begun. The purpose of the trial review is to determine if the Consortium should conduct a technical review of the specification, and to allow member organizations to prepare sufficient resources to conduct that technical review. At the end of the trial review, each Advisory Committee representative is asked to give the Director a Yes/No vote. A No vote, to not proceed with a technical review, must be accompanied with comments to explain the vote. The Director considers the votes, and makes an informed decision as to whether to proceed with the technical review.

If the decision is to proceed, then a three month technical review begins. A Web posting and an electronic mailing list will be created at MIT for discussion; participation on this list is open to all member organizations, without constraint. As issues are raised during the review, it is expected that participants will vote (formally or informally) on how to resolve the issues. The Architect will consider the votes, and make an informed decision. Meetings may be called, as deemed necessary by the participants or the Director.

At the end of the technical review period, each Advisory Committee representative is asked to give the Director a Yes/No/Not-Yet vote. A No vote, to discontinue the review and reject the specification, must be accompanied with comments to explain the vote. A Not-Yet vote indicates that the specification either needs substantially more design work, or that the complexity of the specification requires a longer review cycle. A Not-Yet vote also must be accompanied with comments to explain the vote. The Director will consider the votes, and make an informed decision as to whether to proceed to the next stage of the process, or to extend the technical review, or to dismiss the specification without prejudice and ask the sponsor to resubmit after redesign, or to reject the specification.

If the specification is accepted, then a three month public review begins. The Director will make a reasonable effort to distribute the specification to the public, primarily by posting on the Web. Any issues raised during this review must be answered by the Architect in conjunction with the review participants, in the same way as during the technical review. In parallel with the public review, a ``proof of concept'' implementation of the specification should be undertaken. Proof of concept typically requires a complete, public, portable implementation, but a public implementation is not a requirement and alternatives can be proposed on a case by case basis. Any issues raised during the implementation effort will be handled in the same way as during the technical review.

When public review has ended and the Director believes proof of concept has been established, each Advisory Committee representative is asked to give the Director a Yes/No vote. A Yes vote indicates that proof of concept has been demonstrated, and the specification should now be accepted as a standard. A No vote indicates that proof of concept has not yet been demonstrated. A No vote must be accompanied with comments to explain the vote. The Director will consider the votes, and make an informed decision as to whether to accept the specification, or to restart the specification at some earlier stage in the overall process.

Once a standard has been approved, the Web posting and mailing list will continue to be used to discuss possible clarifications or additions to the standard. The Director will appoint an Architect for such changes; this Architect may differ from the original Architect. Resolution of issues is handled in the same way as during previous technical reviews. The Director has final authority on all decisions. Major changes to the standard will require the full trial/technical/public review process, at the discretion of the Director.

MIT may but is not required to propose standards before national or international formal standards bodies; individual member organizations may assume that initiative. The Consortium will attempt to provide technical assistance and advice to standards bodies, and will participate in the formal standards process as resources permit.

8. Communication within Consortium.

The Consortium carries out almost all activities using the World Wide Web and electronic mail. Network connectivity to MIT should be viewed as a requirement for adequate participation in Consortium activities, including the functions of the Advisory Committee. MIT will only provide information in hard copy form at the discretion of the Director.

9. Software Distribution.

The MIT staff will maintain and distribute a collection of software and documentation. This collection will consist of specifications and sample implementations of approved standards, sample applications and other relevant software, and associated documentation. The contents of this collection will be determined by the Director and MIT staff based on the needs and desires of the member organizations, tempered by resource constraints. Member organizations can obtain a copy of each alpha, beta, and public distribution of the reference code (this latter with a one month lead time over public release) at no charge. The frequency with which new distributions are produced will be determined by the Director, with the advice of the Advisory Committee.

The MIT staff will provide a public network path for reporting problems with and suggesting changes to this collection. The MIT staff will maintain a database of such bug reports and an archive of bug fixes, and this information will be available to member organizations as it is generated, using a Web posting and network mail. A small subset of the most crucial bug fixes will be made available to the public; the subset will be chosen by the MIT staff under the guidance of the Director.

Member organizations can incorporate software and documentation produced by the MIT staff into products at any time after the materials have been released to the Consortium. Member organizations shall not adopt or incorporate such releases into products prior to release to the Consortium. Materials are considered released once they have been explicitly distributed to member organizations, or once they have been made accessible over the network in a form explicitly marked as a Consortium release.

The MIT staff will also endeavor to collect and distribute software contributed by other individuals and organizations as well as by member organizations. MIT will accept such third party software only with appropriate representations of sufficient right, title and interest to contribute the software, but will bear no responsibility if contributed software should prove to be infringing. In addition, the MIT staff will not be responsible for maintaining such software. The contents and release schedule for the contributed software collection will be determined by the Consortium Director and staff.

In general, all materials included in Consortium-sponsored distributions will be copyrighted, and will contain permission notices granting unrestricted use and redistribution of the materials provided that copyrights and permission notices are left intact. Specific exceptions can be made, upon approval of the Director at the advice of the Advisory Committee. All materials are provided "as is", without express or implied warranty.

10. Use of Hardware.

The MIT staff will not attempt to acquire or maintain hardware platforms produced by every member organization, but will attempt to have a reasonable selection of platforms. All hardware and software acquisitions will be at the discretion of MIT. The MIT staff will not be responsible for ensuring that prototype or released software operates correctly on any particular hardware or system configuration, but will attempt to ensure portability of such software to a variety of systems.

11. Use of Funds.

Consortium income beyond that needed to cover the direct and indirect costs of the Consortium will be allocated for innovative W3 work as determined by the Director at the advice of the Advisory Committee. However, if the total Consortium income each year exceeds $1.4 million, one-third of the income in excess of $1.4 million will be used at the discretion of MIT-LCS.

12. Technical Conferences.

The Consortium will sponsor an annual conference, open to the public, to promote the exchange of technical information about the World Wide Web. Also workshops will be held in various technical areas such as privacy and authentication, reliability, computer communication, semantics, and so forth as deemed necessary and will include experts from MIT and the international technical community as deemed appropriate by the Director.