Cooperation & Competition in building the Web, « the universe of network-accessible information » Jean-François Abramatic Chief Product Officer ILOG

Agenda Some history context –Computers, networks, software –Convergence opportunities computing, telecommunications & multimedia industries Development & Deployment –Robust, scalable, adaptive infrastructure simplicity in order to achieve universality Market requirements –Industry consortium Team, Members, Public Public requirements –Societal impact : What does it mean to be responsible ? –Deserving the WW before the W Some lessons learned

Some history context Computing : cost of resources going down –Servers, PCs, …, mobile devices Networking : availability of the Internet architecture –Interoperability –Device independence –Intelligence at the boundaries –Culture of cooperation Software : maturity of environments –Operating systems & languages –Development environments –Data representation & structure Text, graphics, image, sound, video Structured documents, HyperText Databases

Development & Deployment « Rough Consensus & Running Code » Leveraging the IETF experience –HTTP, HTML, URI at IETF –HTML moves to W3C –HTTP, URI remain at IETF W3C Candidate recommendation –Checking interoperable implementations XML Signature –Joint Working Group IETF-W3C IETF : cryptography & protocols W3C : XML

Market requirements Industry : early involvement in cooperative design –X Window Consortium experience –Vendor neutral hosts MIT, INRIA/ERCIM, Keio –Any organization can participate Roles –Team : architecture –Industry : market –Public : society Rules –Activity creation –Recommendation lifecycle –Results available to all –Commitment to royalty free implementations

Societal requirements Technology & Society –Content selection : PICS –Privacy : P3P –IPR policy : royalty-free commitment Web Accessibility Initiative –Guidelines for Best Practices –Education & Outreach –Supported by government fundings Internationalization

Lessons learned Gathering the relevant Community –IETF & W3C –XML : structured documents & databases –OMA & W3C : Mobile Web initiative Sharing the evolution of the Architecture –TAG –Last Call stage Moving towards a vision –From Mosaic to the Semantic Web –From browsing to authoring –People leveraging machines

Where this will all end up is anyone’s guess, the only way to find out is to keep going ! Vint Cerf