IDPF Members Approve Plan to Combine with W3C

The member organizations of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) have overwhelmingly approved, by a margin of 71 (88%)  in favor  to 10 (12%) opposed, a plan proposed by the IDPF Board of Directors to combine IDPF with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The plan will now proceed, with anticipated completion of the combination by January, 2017 still subject to finalization of the necessary definitive agreements.

85 votes were cast (including 4 abstentions), equating to 65% of the 130 IDPF members in good standing. This represented the highest percentage of IDPF members participating in any vote or election in the last 8 years, significantly exceeding the 25% quorum requirement.

Much work remains to be done on drafting and executing final documents necessary to effect the planned combination, as well as undertaking other transition activities contingent on that completion. IDPF expects to share more information within the next month about status and next steps regarding the combination.

We hope that all IDPF members and others in the industry, whether or not initially in favor of the proposed combination, will now join together and collaborate to maximize the success of a significantly expanded publishing community in W3C in order to effectively advance an open, accessible, interoperable digital publishing ecosystem.

Note: this post was updated on Nov 30, 2016 to reflect elimination of a duplicate vote found during post-election vote analysis. The originally published results were 86 total votes 72 in favor.