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The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) comprises a consortium that produces standards—"recommendations", as they call them—for the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee, the original creator of HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) which form the basis of the Web, heads the Consortium.
A standard goes through the stages Working Draft, Last Call, Proposed Recommendation and Candidate Recommendation. It ends as a Recommendation. The Consortium leaves it up to manufacturers to follow the recommendations. Many do, although they are often implemented only partially.
The Consortium's headquarters is at present on the fifth floor of the Gates Tower in the Stata Center at MIT. The other partners managing W3C are ERCIM and Keio University in Japan.
See also: Cascading Style Sheets, DOM, SVG, XML, WAI