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The Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit corporation
devoted to developing, maintaining, and promoting software internationalization standards and data,
particularly the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of text in
all modern software products and standards. The Unicode Consortium actively develops standards in
the area of internationalization including defining the behavior and relationships between Unicode characters.
The Consortium works closely with W3C and with ISO and IEC—in particular with ISO/IEC/JTC 1/SC2/WG2, which is
responsible for maintaining ISO/IEC 10646, the International Standard synchronized with the Unicode Standard.
The publications of the Unicode Consortium include
The Unicode
Standard
, with its Annexes and
Character Database
Unicode Technical
Standards and Reports
Unicode Technical Notes
the
Common Locale Data
Repository
, and the
International Components for Unicode
Members of the Consortium
include major computer corporations, software producers, database
vendors, government ministries, research institutions, international agencies, various user
groups, and interested individuals. A
white paper
outlining the
overall
value of a Unicode membership to an organization is available
separately.
The Consortium's
Directors
and Officers
come from a variety of organizations, representing
a wide spectrum of text-encoding and computing applications.
Unicode, Inc. is incorporated in the State of California,
doing
business as "The Unicode Consortium"
. The Unicode Consortium is a
nonprofit public benefit corporation and has the status of a
501(c)(3) charitable organization
Donations to the Consortium are tax-deductible to the extent allowed for by law.
The Consortium
Articles of Incorporation
and
Bylaws
are publicly available.
The Consortium maintains a set of
official
policies
with regards to patents, the stability of the Standard,
and Unicode's trademarks, logo and copyright material.
There are several consortium
committees, including three technical committees
and the editorial committee.
Unicode Technical Committee
Responsible for the creation, maintenance, and quality of the
Unicode
Standard
, and related software globalization standards and documents.
Unicode CLDR Technical Committee
Responsible for the Unicode Locales Project, the Common Locale Data Repository, and related
software localization standards and documents.
Unicode ICU Technical Committee
Responsible for the ICU (International Components for
Unicode) Project.
Unicode Editorial Committee
Responsible for editing the Consortium's publications and web pages.
The Unicode Consortium sponsors an occasional
Bulldog
award
given to various personalities for their "outstanding
personal contributions to the philosophy and dissemination of the
Unicode Standard".
A number of Unicode members and volunteers are active in organizing periodic
Internationalization and Unicode Conferences
, which are conducted by an independent
conference organizer under license from the Unicode Consortium.