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Berners-Lee Launches New W3 Foundation
robertsonadams tips us to the initiation of the World Wide Web Foundation with $5M of seed funding from the Knight Foundation. From the announcement: "Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, unveils the World Wide Web Foundation. It aims to advance One Web that is free and open, to expand its capability and robustness, and to extend its benefits to all people on the planet." The new foundation's site should have video up soon of Berners-Lee's speech at the kickoff event. The foundation hopes to raise $50M–$100M and will issue grants in Web science, technology and practice, and Web for society. Initial plans will be disclosed early next year.
Hopefully the WWWF will take a rather more balanced view than that expressed in the parent post. I have some faith that it will: Berners-Lee has always struck me as both a smart guy and someone who genuinely wants to do the right thing. It is interesting that considering issues such as privacy and security is explicitly mentioned in the WWWF concept paper (available on their web site), but that Berners-Lee also told the BBC he was concerned about the need to separate rumour from reliable information on the web. Whether or not on-line anonymity should be possible is pretty fundamental to these issues.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
From http://www.webfoundation.org/programs/
The Foundation will launch with three projects:
Web Science and Research, Web Technology and Practice, and Web for Society.
The output of the projects will be:
- Studies
- Basic research
- Thought leadership
- Curricula
- Conferences, workshops, etc.
- Support for organizations developing Web standards
- Support for organizations using the web to solve social problems
- Training materials, guidelines, etc.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday