From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008) [foldoc]:
World Wide Web Consortium
W3C
W3 Consortium
<World-Wide Web, body> (W3C) The main standards body for the
World-Wide Web. W3C works with the global community to
establish international standards for client and server
protocols that enable on-line commerce and communications on
the Internet. It also produces reference software.
W3C was created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) on 25 October 1994. {Netscape Communications
Corporation} was a founding member. The Consortium is run by
MIT LCS and INRIA, in collaboration with CERN where the
web originated. W3C is funded by industrial members but its
products are freely available to all. The director is Tim
Berners-Lee who invented the World-Wide Web at the Center
for European Particle Research (CERN).
{(http://w3.org/)}.
(1996-11-03)