On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 5:10 PM, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
In comparison, we have a couple of folks who keep an eye on some of the W3C / WHATWG lists that are working on the HTML 5 specifications -- these are mostly open lists which made it easier for particularly interested individuals like Aryeh & Tim to pop on either for specific issues or just as voracious list readers. ;)
Wikimedia could become a member of the W3C too if it liked:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/join
It looks like it would cost $7,900 a year in dues, if I read right. But the benefits in practice are pretty small:
* You get a seat on the Advisory Committee, which doesn't mean much because it's already fairly large. Would be nice to have more open-source-friendly organizations there, but one more wouldn't make a big difference. * Wikimedia employees can join W3C Working Groups. This doesn't really matter because the specs that matter to the web (HTML, CSS, SVG) are all developed in public anyway, and anyone can provide feedback in some form, and members other than browser implementers don't have much de facto control. It would only matter if someone wanted to actually edit a spec or something.
So it's not a huge amount of money, but probably not worth it except maybe for making a pro-standards statement.