Standards are a key part of keeping the Open Web open. The Web runs on standards developed mainly by two standards bodies: the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which standardizes HTML and Web APIs, and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which standardizes networking protocols, such as HTTP and TLS, the core transport protocols for the Web. I’m pleased to announce that Martin Thomson, from the CTO group, was recently appointed to the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the committee responsible for the architectural oversight of the IETF standards process.
Martin’s appointment recognizes a long history of major contributions to the Internet standards process: including serving as editor for HTTP/2, the newest and much improved version of HTTP, helping to design, implement, and document WebPush, which we just launched in Firefox, and playing major roles in WebRTC, TLS and Geolocation. In addition to his standards work, Martin has committed code all over Gecko, in areas ranging from the WebRTC stack to NSS. Serving on the IAB will give Martin a platform to do even greater things for the Internet and the Open Web as a whole.
Please join me in congratulating Martin.