◆ Semantic Web Catalogue

Problem thread

Who sets the standard?

Who gets to decide the Web's data standards: a consortium, a grassroots community, or the largest consumers of the data?

issue
governance
also adoption & incentives
status
open
steps
8, 2001–2024
threads
all problem threads

The W3C ran the Semantic Web's standards through member working groups under a royalty-free patent policy. Microformats grew outside it, browser makers put microdata into HTML through the WHATWG, and the major search engines launched schema.org and chose its syntax themselves. JSON-LD began in an open community group and was then standardized by a W3C working group. Each route traded openness, speed and the power to get adopted against each other. The property-graph industry later took its query language to ISO rather than the W3C.

Lineage

  1. Feb 2001
    proposes project
    W3C Semantic Web Activity

    The W3C's programme for Semantic Web standards from February 2001: member working groups produce Recommendations such as RDF, OWL and SPARQL. [src]

  2. 5 Feb 2004
    proposes writing
    W3C Patent Policy

    W3C Recommendations are to be implementable on a royalty-free basis, so that Web standards can be adopted as widely as possible. [src]

  3. 2005
    proposes standard ★ seminal
    Microformats

    Grassroots conventions developed on an open wiki outside any standards body: solve a specific problem, start simple, humans first and machines second. [src]

  4. 14 Oct 2008
    proposes standard
    RDFa

    The W3C's way to embed RDF in HTML attributes, a Recommendation from October 2008. [src]

  5. 2009
    proposes standard
    HTML microdata

    Browser makers' standards group adds its own, simpler way to annotate HTML with machine-readable data, as an alternative to both RDFa and microformats. [src1][src2]

  6. 2 Jun 2011
    settles standard ★ seminal
    Schema.org

    Google, Bing and Yahoo launch a common vocabulary and choose the markup themselves: microdata, as 'a balance between the extensibility of RDFa and the simplicity of microformats'. [src]

  7. 16 Jan 2014
    proposes standard ★ seminal
    JSON-LD

    Developed in an open W3C Community Group, then standardized through the RDF Working Group after months of heated discussion; its lead editor writes that many of that group's members did not understand JSON. [src]

  8. 12 Apr 2024
    proposes standard
    GQL

    ISO, not the W3C, publishes the standard query language for property graphs, partly derived from Neo4j's Cypher: the graph-database industry standardises outside the Web's standards body. [src]

Recent signals

Dated events that show the problem moving, newest last.

  1. 9 Dec 2025

    Anthropic, Block and OpenAI found the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation to host MCP and other agent protocols. Model Context Protocol[src]

  2. 15 Jan 2026

    W3C charters a new Social Web Working Group to maintain ActivityPub. ActivityPub[src]

  3. Mar 2026

    The IETF approves a working group for AT Protocol, moving it from one company's control to a standards body. AT Protocol[src]

Open now

Under each question, the answers people have put forward or built. The catalogue gives no odds on them.

  • Can a vocabulary steered by a few large consumers stay responsive to everyone who publishes with it? [src]
    Anyone can propose changes to schema.org, but its founding search engines started it and a steering group approves releases.
    • A steering group of the largest consumers keeps the final say. Schema.org
      Schema.org's community group proposes, but its steering group, founded by the search engines, decides what is adopted.[src]
  • When do community groups, consortium working groups or industry coalitions produce standards that last? [src1][src2]
    JSON-LD moved from a community group into a working group; HTML moved from the W3C to the WHATWG in 2019.
    • Industry foundations host fast-moving protocols. Model Context Protocol
      Agent protocols went to a Linux Foundation fund rather than to the W3C or IETF.[src1][src2]
    • Standards bodies take over protocols that a community or company started.
      ActivityPub moved to a new W3C working group and AT Protocol to the IETF in 2026.[src1][src2]

Forces

Pressures that push this problem one way or another, as their sources argue them. All forces

How to contribute