Today W3C takes initial steps in the development of a new program to support Open Source Software projects. The program will support collaboration around web technology in order to accelerate its adoption and interoperability.
“W3C is a trusted brand for neutral, multi-stakeholder governance,” said Dominique Hazaël-Massieux, interim W3C CEO. “We have extensive experience convening communities to pursue web-scale interoperability, and a longstanding culture of open collaboration. Today we initiate an expansion of our horizon so that open source software developers can contribute more visibly to making the web work for everyone. We are grateful to Digital Bazaar for helping us kick off this initiative.“
Digital Bazaar contributes dashboard code
The first pilot of this experiment is the Can I VC? Project, a community-driven compatibility dashboard for the W3C Verifiable Credentials (VC) ecosystem. As use cases for digital identity and credentials on the web expand, this dashboard will help stakeholders in the digital credentials ecosystem–including wallet providers, issuers, verifiers, regulators, and others– understand interoperability based on test suites developed by the W3C community. W3C Member Digital Bazaar contributed the code that powers the “Can I VC?” dashboard to W3C.
“Membership and participation in the W3C have been central to our success for over 15 years,” said Benjamin Young, Developer Engagement Engineer at Digital Bazaar. “Contributing canivc.com to W3C felt like a natural fit. The dashboard can now grow next to the standards, test suites, and community members that all mutually depend on each other. We’re confident that Open Source projects will be a valuable addition to the W3C’s roster.”
Spider chart in the Can I VC dashboard illustrating percentage of tests satisfied by a particular implementation
Building on 30 years of experience
Since its founding in 1994, W3C has complemented its standards development work by developing or being actively part of many open source projects to incubate new ideas for the web (for example, libwww, Amaya), support adoption of web standards (such as the W3C Validator, Web Platform Tests), and facilitate standardization activities. The web runs on open source software, and W3C sees several important reasons to strengthen connectivity with the open source community and nurture open source projects that benefit the web.
- Innovation is happening faster and increasingly “code-first.” Open source has taken over much of the coordination that used to happen around specifications. A goal of the open source program is to enable W3C to play a role in these fast-moving conversations, especially as AI significantly speeds up code development.
- The line between open standards and open source has blurred. Many W3C specifications look like pseudo-code, and AI is being used to generate code from specification-like prompts, or even specifications (and/or their test suites).
- Digital public infrastructure initiatives demand interoperable OSS aligned with open-web values.
W3C has much to learn from successful organizations such as the Linux Foundation and the Apache Software Foundation. Unlike open source hosting organizations, however, W3C has the mission of building a coherent web architecture. Projects supported by W3C will mature within an ecosystem that seeks to build a coherent open platform through processes and IPR policies designed to support interoperability, quality, W3C values, and the web.
W3C is actively planning a second pilot for this experimental phase of an open source program, and the community will discuss progress during W3C’s annual big meeting – TPAC 2026 – in October.