By Craig Kirkwood, Planet Publish Editor
July 2, 2002

The W3C was created to "lead the Web to its full potential" by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT LCS) in the USA, the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) in France and Keio University in Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of information about the World Wide Web for developers and users, and various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new technology. To date, nearly 500 organizations are Members of the Consortium.

The W3C "Recommendation track" is the process that the W3C follows to build consensus around a Web technology, both within the W3C and in the Web community as a whole. The W3C turns a technical report into a Recommendation by following this process. The labels that describe increasing levels of maturity and consensus along the Recommendation track are:

Working Draft

A technical report on the Recommendation track begins as a Working Draft. A Working Draft is a chartered work item of a Working Group and generally represents work in progress and a commitment by the W3C to pursue work in a particular area. The label "Working Draft" does not imply that there is consensus within the W3C about the technical report.

Last Call Working Draft

A Last Call Working Draft is a special instance of a Working Draft that is considered by the Working Group to fulfill the relevant requirements of its charter and any accompanying requirements documents. A Last Call Working Draft is a public technical report for which the Working Group seeks technical review from other the W3C groups, the W3C Members, and the public.

Candidate Recommendation

A Candidate Recommendation is believed to meet the relevant requirements of the Working Group's charter and any accompanying requirements documents, and has been published in order to gather implementation experience and feedback. Advancement of a technical report to Candidate Recommendation is an explicit call for implementation experience to those outside of the related Working Groups or the W3C itself.

Proposed Recommendation

A Proposed Recommendation is believed to meet the relevant requirements of the Working Group's charter and any accompanying requirements documents, to represent sufficient implementation experience, and to adequately address dependencies from the W3C technical community and comments from previous reviewers. A Proposed Recommendation is a technical report that the Director has sent to the Advisory Committee for review.

W3C Recommendation

A W3C Recommendation is a technical report that is the end result of extensive consensus-building inside and outside of the W3C about a particular technology or policy. The W3C considers that the ideas or technology specified by a Recommendation are appropriate for widespread deployment and promote the W3C's mission.

Possible transitions of the Recommendation track

Generally, Working Groups create Working Drafts with the intent of advancing them along the Recommendation track. However, publication of a technical report at one maturity level does not guarantee that it will advance to the next. Some technical reports may be dropped as active work or may be subsumed by other technical reports. If, at any maturity level of the Recommendation track, work on a technical report ceases (erg, because a Working Group or Activity closes, or because the work is subsumed by another technical report), the technical report should be published as a the W3C Note and the status section should include the rationale.

Every technical report on the Recommendation track is edited by one or more editors appointed by a Working Group Chair. It is the responsibility of these editors to ensure that the decisions of the group are correctly reflected in subsequent drafts of the technical report. Editors are not required to be part of the Team.

Working Groups must archive each decision to request advancement of a technical report to the next maturity level of the Recommendation track. Any time a technical report advances to a higher maturity level, the announcement of the transition must indicate any formal objections. If, at any maturity level prior to Recommendation, review comments or implementation experience result in substantive changes to a technical report, the technical report should be returned to Working Draft for further work.

For further information visit: www.w3.org/Consortium/Process-20010719/tr.html#RecsCR