Notices by Robin Berjon (robin@mastodon.social)

@aral And yet, that's what we're building.

IPFS is a public good. It's important that it stays that way, that it resists capture, and that it have great governance by and for its community.

Which is why we had a full-day Community & Governance track: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuhRWgmPaHtTIFbOVO5YfXkoFg6wIGbBN

I'm delighted to report that MIT and the W3C have reached an agreement and that the W3C will kick off 2023 with funds and assets.

Many thanks for all your support and to all those who worked towards reaching an agreement. Enjoy the holidays!
https://mastodon.social/@robin/109524929231432913

Yesterday, the Board learnt that the financial balance that MIT is offering is actually much worse than previously stated due to additional liabilities that MIT has only just informed us of.

Except with a drastic reduction in staff, W3C would not have enough money to make it to the end of January based on the proposed agreement. And even then it would be unlikely to make it through Q1.

At this point it looks like we will not have an operational W3C nonprofit on Jan 1. Every Director will vote their conscience, but it seems likely that the asset transfer will be rejected, leaving MIT responsible for its contracts with W3C Members (for which they have paid).

No one knows what happens then.

We are actively figuring out how to re-hire the W3C/MIT staff so that we can continue operating in the new year.

I think the fact that MIT is holding people's jobs hostage over the holidays isn't lost on anyone.

If the nonprofit doesn't get the funds MIT owes us, we will progressively have to start transferring Members in the Americas to the other hosts in the EU, Japan, and China.

I'd be curious to see the face of US officials when they find out that American companies now have to participate in Web governance abroad. The geopolitics of standards are… interesting.

At any rate, creative ideas to fix this situation are welcome. The Board is continuing to work towards a solution.

I just thought that the Web community should know where things stand. I'll keep you posted.

@Edent So, I 100% agree with you that both Google and browser-centricity are serious problems that we need to solve; however that doesn't mean that everything that goes wrong is Google's fault :)

In this case, having been on the inside, I don't think it is. It took a lot of mistakes to get us to this point. Happy to colour in details, but I'd need to start drinking…

As you may recall:

• The W3C is in part hosted by MIT but MIT intends to withdraw on Dec 31.
• A new W3C nonprofit needs to take over on Jan 1.
• MIT needs to transfer assets (member dues, contracts, IP…) to the new W3C for it to operate.
• I was elected to the W3C Board and am part of the negotiations.

We're two weeks away from cutover and the negotiations are going… poorly. 🧵

MIT clearly appears to be negotiating with the expectation that they can get away with whatever, and with no care for the consequences.

On November 17 we saw terms that were unfair in that they made W3C carry the cost of MIT’s questionable accounting practices and failed to honour prior agreements, but that came with sufficient funds to support the continuation of W3C Inc.

Right before the Board's December 10-12 meeting, we received a draft contract from MIT with a worse offer.

It transferred liabilities much higher than the assets that came with and significantly decreased the funds that W3C would receive.

This jeopardised the Consortium’s viability but we sought to continue negotiating in good faith and looked for options to accelerate revenue to avoid cash flow issues.