The World Wide Web Foundation shut down on September 27 after 15 years of operation, with its co-founders saying its mission is largely accomplished.

The Web Foundation was created in 2009. It was co-founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Worldwide Web, and Rosemary Leith. It’s goal was to help increase accessibility to the web at a time when barely a fifth of the world had access to it, as the founders point out in an open letter.

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This work has furthered the agenda for a safe, trusted and open web and helped bolster the wider movement of passionate supporters while contributing to increased access and a better experience online for hundreds of millions of people. We are incredibly proud of the organisation’s impact and thank our supporters that have enabled us to move the needle in a big way to address the issues of access and affordability over the past many years.

Fast-forward 15 years and the web is ubiquitous, with far more able to access it. As a result of that change, the Web Foundation’s co-founders believe the foundation’s mission has been accomplished and is no longer needed.

The landscape has fundamentally shifted with access to the Web rising dramatically – nearly 70% of the world are now online from just over 20% in 2009. There are many excellent organisations now defending the Web’s principles and users’ rights online. The threats to the Web have increased too, social media’s dominant business model has brought about the commoditisation of users data and a concentration of power contrary to Tim’s original vision, impacting all aspects of society from our democracy to our individual wellbeing.

The end of the foundation doesn’t mean the end of Berners-Lee’s work, however, as he has been working on the Solid Protocol, designed to give users control over their own data. Moving forward, Berners-Lee will be focusing his attention on that endeavor.

We, along with the Web Foundation board have been asking ourselves where we can have the most impact in the future. The conclusion we have reached is that Tim’s passion on restoring power over and control of data to individuals and actively building powerful collaborative systems needs to be the highest priority going forward. In order to best achieve this, Tim will focus his efforts to support his vision for the Solid Protocol and other decentralised systems. The board of the Web Foundation has therefore made the decision to wind down the Web Foundation, closing our virtual doors at the end of September and enabling Tim to focus on his vision for Solid.

Solid Protocol

Solid Protocol is arguably even more important that Berners-Lee’s initial work, as it could ultimately serve as the foundation for how companies and organizations interact with data, providing a more secure and private option moving forward.

The Solid website outlines how the protocol works.

Solid is a specification that lets people store their data securely in decentralized data stores called Pods. Pods are like secure personal web servers for your data.

Entities control access to the data in their Pod. Entities decide what data to share and with whom (be those individuals, organizations, applications, etc.), and can revoke access at any time.

To store and access data in a Pod, Solid-enabled applications use standard, open, and interoperable data formats and protocols.

The protocol would allow any kind of data to be stored within a Pod.

Any kind of data can be stored in a Solid Pod — from structured data to files that one might store in a Google Drive or Dropbox folder.

What makes Solid special is the ability to store data in a way that promotes interoperability. Specifically, Solid supports storing Linked Data. Structuring data as Linked Data means that different applications can work with the same data.

The protocol’s Authentication and Authorization system ensures strong control over one’s data, while simultaneously fostering a collaborative environment.

With Solid’s Authentication and Authorization systems, one can determine which people and applications can access their data. Entities can grant or revoke access to any slice of their data as needed. Consequently, entities can do more with their data, because the applications they decide to use can be granted access to a wider and more diverse set of information.

And just as one can share their data with others, others can also share their data in return. This creates rich and collaborative experiences across a combination of both personal and shared data.

There are already a number of organizations using Solid Protocol, including BBC Research and Development.

Given the number of data breaches and privacy-invasive features and services that have come to define the modern web, Solid Protocol is a solution the internet—and its users—desperately need.

Here’s to hoping Berners-Lee’s current endeavor is as successful as his previous ones.