W3C stops work on Libwww

By Alun Williams

Posted on 2 Sep 2003 at 12:24

The Web standards body W3C has announced it is has stopped work on its Libwww protocol library project, and is inviting users to participate in a Future of Libwww Survey.

Libwww is a free, modular client side Web API written in C for Unix and Windows. It is designed for applications such as building Web robots and batch tools, as well as browsers and editors.

For example, the W3C's webbot is a Libwww-based fast 'Web walker' that can be used to check links, find bad HTML, map out a Web site or download images. In one application, the libwww robot's communications with Jigsaw and Apache servers have been used to measure HTTP/1.1's performance.

W3C blames lack of resources for its abandonment of development and support for libwww.

Running the survey is just intended to provide feedback, which will be published - it doesn't mean that W3C plans to put more resources into libwww. The organisation states on its website that it now expects effort to come from the open source community.

Note that a public W3C account is required to complete the survey. More details are available on the Libwww page.