As an example of the principles of what the web should be, Mozilla's manifesto is an interesting one, Mozilla being a non-profit that is supposed to be helping to build a greater internet for all. Obviously its flagship "product" is the Firefox web browser which is built with the Gecko engine, one of the three main browser engines. ^[0] Their manifesto is described here.

1. The internet is an integral part of modern life—a key component in education, communication, collaboration, business, entertainment and society as a whole.
2. The internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.
3. The internet must enrich the lives of individual human beings.
4. Individuals' security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional.
5. Individuals must have the ability to shape the internet and their own experiences on the internet.
6. The effectiveness of the internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralized participation worldwide.
7. Free and open source software promotes the development of the internet as a public resource.
8. Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability and trust.
9. Commercial involvement in the development of the internet brings many benefits; a balance between commercial profit and public benefit is critical.
10. Magnifying the public benefit aspects of the internet is an important goal, worthy of time, attention and commitment.

The first one is indisputably true and why this all matters. It's actually quite a concern how reliant we all are on systems that aren't necessarily that resilient. The rest are primarily about how the internet should be. I think 6 is interesting because interoperability and innovation are often in conflict in that innovation requires trying things and going fast which means making mistakes while interoperability requires agreement and specifications. This would be quite relevant to Mozilla since they develop one of the most popular web browsers and thus have a role in shaping those technologies and their usage; they have a significant role in defining the specifications for technology but it's difficult to see them being on the forefront of those technologies. They do act as a useful handbrake in some cases for protecting security and privacy on the web since they're not beholden to advertising like Google is. Mozilla does have origin trials but it pales in comparison to Google's one

In terms of breakthrough technologies, Mozilla has Firefox which it was created for. It also initiated the MDN Web Docs which are exceptionally useful documentation for developing with web technologies. There's also the Rust programming language which is a fantastic language but isn't really related to Mozilla these days even though it was incubated there.

Another Mozilla document of interest is their vision one found here which is about their vision for how the internet should change to be better for all who use it. Most interesting about this one is that at the end there are two points where the internet has issues where they don't have a method of remediation. All the previous technical points they at least have a plan or roadmap towards a brighter future but with these last two which aren't technical they can only identify the issue but don't have a way to resolve it. The two points are to do with centralization and monetization. These ones in my view can't be fixed by themselves without fixing broader issues in society where the same problems occur outside of the internet.

The next non-profit we'll look at is the W3C which was founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee to facilitate the healthy development of the World Wide Web. The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium that develops the standards that shape the technical aspects of how the web operates.

The W3C vision document which can be found here is their document to do with what their principles are as custodians of the specifications of the Web. However reading through the principles they seem to be totally contradicted by the reality of the situation where they can write whatever they want in their specification but ultimately what the browsers do rules. These seem more aspirational than anything else. Diversity is a great goal but unfortunately it's always going to be dominated by American voices with perhaps a few from Europe. Conversations and specifications naturally take place in English since that's the lingua franca of those countries.

I guess the W3C is not really an independent organisation but a consortium that exists to organise various companies and allow them to manage the web standards together so it can't really go beyond them and work in ways that aren't convenient for them.

Footnotes