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https://www.web3.foundation and https://www.webfoundation.org and https://www.wc3.org seem/sound related, so are these organizations related?

Web3 Foundation's (https://Polkadot.network) writing nearly implies it is related er connected to W3C or WebFoundation.org (Sir Tim Berners-Lee, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee the founder of the World Wide Web), and search engines show a questionable order when searching "Web3 Foundation" which might appear to be the WC3 or WebFoundation.

I know many people are not familiar with Polkadot, given it's not very old. In the news are lots of stories about "parachains" of which made DOT (https://pro.coinbase.com/trade/DOT-USD) popular. Coinbase and others have heavily supported these efforts. I was surprised to read DOT research papers and other sources repeatedly describe their efforts with nearly the equivalent language as W3C uses when describing their standardization efforts, which might as well be copy/paste from W3C advocacy. I doubt I am alone thinking DOT was literally replacing W3C, from their language usage. There is a tone/suggestion of somehow DOT recruiting all the experts from W3C, and W3C governance becoming DOT protocol governance.

(I chatted about https://view.matrix.org/room/!TawyRKRXPWmCJVthoT:matrix.org/?anchor=$1640295609873591AQvAS:matrix.org&offset=90 [1][2][3] this phenomenon because it could seem to be an attack vector nearly, there is a risk people might confuse these three organizations?)

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  • Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.
    – Community Bot
    Dec 24 at 4:43
  • @Community I originally went for asking at bitcoin.stackexchange.com but felt Free/Open Source best describes these (competing?) organizations, feel free to migrate the q there if best.
    – prosody-Gabe Vereable Context
    Dec 24 at 4:49
  • 4
    I’m voting to close this question because it's not about open source software in any meaningful sense.
    – Philip Kendall
    Dec 24 at 7:42
  • 2
    @prosody-GabeVereableContext It is unclear which problem you are trying to solve with this question. And it is unclear what the answer should be other than an extract from the 'About Us' pages of the respective websites or a copy from Wikipedia.
    – Martin_in_AUT
    Dec 24 at 9:24
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    I guess those Web3 cryptobros would like to co-opt the legitimacy and history of the W3C, and that such confusing names might not be an accident. I doubt Web3 ideas will be adopted by the W3C, and even then it won't matter: W3C has a long history of writing specifications that no one actually implements (to the point that W3C has stopped pretending like they publish the authoritative HTML5 standard). I can see absolutely no indication that the Web 3.0 Foundation would be connected to W3C or Berners-Lee.
    – amon
    Dec 24 at 11:13
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They are not related.

  1. "Web3 Foundation"/"W3 Foundation" appears to be from Dr. Gavin Wood and is funded by a cryptocurrency token "DOT" (which is spelled generally enough, at the very top of pro.Coinbase.com's listings, to raise financial incentive concerns for a naming Conflict-of-Interest).

  2. "Web Foundation"/"World Wide Web Foundation" was started by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor/father of the Web. https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/

  3. "W3C" is a non-profit standards body for the standards that run the World Wide Web. http://www.w3c.org / https://www.w3.org

Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Web3&oldid=1061872038 :

"Web3 is distinct from Tim Berners-Lee's 1999 concept for a semantic web, which has also been called "Web 3.0".[14] Some writers referring to the decentralized concept usually known as "Web3" have used the terminology "Web 3.0", leading to some confusion between the two concepts.[2][3] Furthermore, some visions of Web3 also incorporate ideas relating to the semantic web.[15][16]"

"[...] the term has been described by Bloomberg as "hazy""

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  • 1
    1) The Internet existed long before the WWW. Don't confuse the two. 2) At least do Sir Tim the courtesy of spelling his surname correctly. 3) WC3 is nothing - it's W3C.
    – Philip Kendall
    Dec 24 at 7:44
  • @PhilipKendall I agree, did I imply otherwise if Sir Tim is often referred to as the "father of the Internet"? Fixed; I got their name correct in the question not the answer for the record, and even linked to their official Wikipedia entry.
    – prosody-Gabe Vereable Context
    Dec 24 at 7:46
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    So the answer to the question is just an extract from the 'About Us' part of the respective webpages?
    – Martin_in_AUT
    Dec 24 at 9:20
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    Sir Tim Berners-Lee had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the invention of the Internet. He was barely 15 years old at the time. He did invent the World Wide Web, but that was 20 years after the Internet.
    – Jörg W Mittag
    8 hours ago
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    The W3C has nothing to do with "the standards that run the Internet". That's the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The W3C is responsible for the standards of the World Wide Web. It's literally in the name "World Wide Web Consortium". Although note that the W3C is mostly concerned with the document side and the conceptual side. E.g. the W3C specifies XML, but HTTP is specified by the IETF, and ECMAScript is specified by ECMA. And because they were moving so slowly and focusing on XML, W3C lost control of HTML, too, which is now specified by WHATWG.
    – Jörg W Mittag
    8 hours ago

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