World Wide Web Consortium
This organization also known as W3C is the main international web standards producer. It was founded in 1994, and lead by Tim Berners-Lee, having a full-time staff that works and coordinates the various specifications.
The consortium is governed by its members, http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List, including non-profit organizations, companies, as well as individuals. You must be a member to access this site. Anyone can become a member as long as his/her application is approved by W3C. Additionally, each member pays fee adjusted for the country's income.
There has been some criticism regarding the membership base, because it is mostly composed of companies, who can afford to pay and spend considerable amount of money on meetings and travel.
In 2006, W3C announced that it will work with WHATWG and stop developing the XHTML standard that never fully took-off. Currently, the two groups have different goals. WHATWG is more focused in what browsers should aim for, on the other hand, W3C has specific snapshots of the living standard making them diverge. Hixie, the editor of WHATWG, sends the feedback to both the groups. For more information on how the two specifications differ see the following URL:
And the official website for W3C is http://www.w3.org/.
