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I've been following these organizations (institutes, entities, whatever) for near 3 months now, and both of them claim that they're trying to make the Internet a better place. They're creating documents under the name of RFC (for IETF) and Recommendation (for W3C) to guide others.

Yet another organization called WHATWG has started another path to develop web, and another community is in action under the title of Internet Society.

I don't know, why many organizations? I mean, can't they simply get merged? Are they really different? How?

Adam Lear
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Saeed Neamati
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    We should create a new organization to replace those and do it better and more unified. [Oh wait...](https://www.xkcd.com/927/) –  Sep 20 '11 at 13:12
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    @delnan, good comic. But this is a real concern. You see that IETF defined UTF-8, then W3C defines XML, then WHATWG defined HTML5. I mean, don't you feel something's wrong? – Saeed Neamati Sep 20 '11 at 14:15
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    "don't you feel something's wrong"? Wrong with what? A single, centralized "good idea authority" doesn't seem possible. How could that work? All the smart people have to (a) work for it and (b) agree. Isn't that a bit silly? – S.Lott Sep 20 '11 at 14:17
  • I'm not an expert on web technology, especially not on the organizations defining it, but I'd guess it's precisely that phenomenon that created some of those bodies and may create more. –  Sep 20 '11 at 14:18
  • @S.Lott, If you talk about **becoming exclusive**, I have to mention that _you won't get competition from a carpenter, when your job is nursing_. W3C has nothing to do with [RFC 4930](http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4930.txt) for example. How they can compete? In current situation, all smart people who work for IETF should agree. They can't get to W3C, can they? – Saeed Neamati Sep 20 '11 at 14:22
  • @Saeed Neamati: If you have two kinds of carpenters, some do framing and some do interior finish work. Two organizations, each with good ideas. Each separate. When I want a framing carpenter, I call from one group. When I want a finish carpenter, I call from the other group. A single group of carpenters doesn't honor special skills, special knowledge and special interest. How can I create **one** organization when there are so many things which are actually different? – S.Lott Sep 20 '11 at 14:46
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    of all these, IETF is the clear winner, see [RFC 1149](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149) – gnat Sep 20 '11 at 15:04
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    And this one, too: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2324.txt – S.Lott Sep 20 '11 at 15:33
  • @S.Lott: note, however, that although clearly written as a joke, htcpcp is really quite well defined, and has actually been implemented. – Jerry Coffin Sep 20 '11 at 21:28

2 Answers2

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IETF works on Internet protocols, particularly at OSI layer 3 and 4.

As you may or may not know, the Internet comprises more than the WWW, which is simply an application-layer protocol. The W3C works on WWW specifications.

stackoverflowuser2010
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  • The WWW is not a protocol. It "is an open source information space where documents and other web resources are identified by URLs, interlinked by hypertext links, and can be accessed via the Internet.[" according to the Wikipedia. :( – lfree Jan 18 '16 at 03:08
  • What are the WWW specifications? IETF -> HTTP/TCP/IP, W3C -> HTTP,CSS,Javascript(?) – Josiah Yoder May 18 '22 at 16:01
  • It looks like I was right except for Javascript, which w3c says is developed by another company. – Josiah Yoder May 18 '22 at 17:44
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IETF focuses on packet/line/terminal/telnet based protocols.

W3C adresses SGML/HTML/XML inspired stuff.

You may also be interested in IEEE, an organization that instead loves communications on the physical layer. (with frequencies/tensions/radio-waves and all that oscilloscoping stuff)

ZJR
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    The statement about the IEEE isn't true. Their Computer Society focuses on all aspects of software development, including (but not limited to) communication protocols, web development, and distributed applications. Other societies or groups do have different focuses, including hardware and radio communication. – Thomas Owens Sep 20 '11 at 19:50
  • Edited, now they just *LOVE* doing physical layer stuff. – ZJR Sep 20 '11 at 20:46
  • @Owens Just curious: got some example of *relevant* non-physical layer standards from IEEE? – ZJR Sep 20 '11 at 20:47
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    @ZJR: IEEE 802.1, 802.2, 802.11v, 802.15.3b, 802.17b, and 802.21, to name just a few. Quite a few more specify a MAC layer along with the PHY. – Jerry Coffin Sep 20 '11 at 21:38
  • @ZJR I wasn't necessarily referring to standards, but rather the research and development efforts by members of the IEEE. – Thomas Owens Sep 20 '11 at 21:42
  • So the main problem here is in my simplification of OSI 1→3 as "physical layer". Oh well, now at least I know **why** the OSI 1→3 layers made it into the layer specification *despite being much more tightly coupled* than 4→7. I mean, they could as well have been considered *sub-layers*. But evidently there is some *deeply-rooted oversensitivity* on the topic. – ZJR Sep 20 '11 at 23:50
  • @ZJR: There isn't 'deeply rooted oversensitivity'. You simply don't know what you're talking about. Go read a good book on networking rather than talking out of your rear end. – stackoverflowuser2010 Sep 21 '11 at 05:31
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    @ZJR: OSI layer 3 is the networking layer, e.g. IP and IPX. It is NOT tightly coupled with layers 1 and 2. As I said, go read a good book before mouthing off like that. You don't see the rest of us going to a surgery message board and talking nonsense about appendectomies. – stackoverflowuser2010 Sep 21 '11 at 06:24
  • @stackoverflowuser2010 Sigh, what is a good book according to your standards? Because obviously the book in my college courses where not good enough and I probably need to be enlightened by some really good book. Book. Good book. Book. Such a nice word. Book. (yes that's some serious necrocommenting) – ZJR Jul 27 '18 at 14:05