History
Free Software and the Web share quite a few principles and some history
- The Web started with free software
- The Web is used a lot for free software projects
- And free software hosts a large part of the Web
- Both are based on the concept of free exchange of ideas
- Both focus on platform and language independance, universality is a
goal.
Why W3C makes software
Software helps at all stages of a specification life:
- Testbeds
- Interoperability
- Demonstators
- Validators
- Converters
We also release software written by W3C system team
Why W3C releases it as free software
- Lower the developement costs
- Getting patches and bug fixes
- More frequent releases
- Help on packaging and porting
- Reach a wider audience
- Anyone can try it
- Can be enclosed on cheap media
- Allow security checkings on sensible environments
What is available
Check the W3C OpenSource page for
the full list, and updates:
- LibWWW: HTTP/1.1 C library (include Web
Commander, WebCon ...)
- Amaya: the Web browser and authoring testbed
- Jigsaw: the Java Web server with full HTTP/1.1 and proxy support
- libxml: XML C toolkit (parser, Dtd,
...)
- Rpmfind: testbed for Web based software distribution
- Validators: HTML, XHTML, CSS, P3P,
XML Schemas
- linkchecker: an HTML link
checker
- Charlint: tool to validate or
normalize Unicode data
- Tidy: the HTML cleaning tool and XHTML converter
- SAC: simple API for CSS with a Java
implementation
- SiRPAC: RDF parser and renderer
- Winie: Web Commander clone in java
using jigsaw HTTP library
- ETA: tracking system
- bind patches: geographic DNS load
balancing patch
- hypermess: hypermail changes for
mail archives
- slidemaker: the perl tool used to
build W3C slides
A large part of the code is available directly from W3C public CVS base.
Conclusions
- W3C uses the free software model, and this fullfill our needs.
- W3C tries also to release any developement done internally
- Large code base adoption takes time
- But small projects can get quickly a large user base