Editing WebDAV (section)

== History ==
WebDAV began in 1996 when [[Jim Whitehead (professor)|Jim Whitehead]] worked with the [[World Wide Web Consortium]] (W3C) to host two meetings to discuss the problem of [[Collaborative editing|distributed authoring]] on the [[World Wide Web]] with interested people.<ref>{{cite web|url= http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1996AprJun/0002.html|title= Proposed agenda for San Mateo Meeting|year= 1996}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url= http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1996JulSep/0095.html|title= Brief mtg. summary|year= 1996}}</ref> [[Tim Berners-Lee]]'s original vision of the Web involved a [[Data storage device|medium]] for both reading and writing. In fact, Berners-Lee's first [[web browser]], called [[WorldWideWeb]], could both view and edit [[web page]]s; but, as the Web grew, it became a read-only medium for most users. Whitehead and other like-minded people wanted to transcend that limitation.<ref>{{cite web
|url= http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1996JulSep/0001.html
|title= Re: Updated agenda}}
</ref>{{sfn|Whitehead|1998|p=40}}

The meetings resulted in the formation of an IETF working group because the new effort would lead to extensions to HTTP, which the IETF had started to standardize.

As work began on the protocol, it became clear that handling both distributed authoring and [[revision control|versioning]] together would involve too much work and that the tasks would have to be separated. The WebDAV group focused on distributed authoring, and left versioning for the future. (The [[#Extensions and derivatives|Delta-V extension]] added versioning later{{snd}} see the Extensions section below.)

The WebDAV [[working group]] concluded its work in March 2007, after the [[Internet Engineering Steering Group]] (IESG) accepted an incremental update to {{IETF RFC|2518}}. Other extensions left unfinished at that time, such as the [[BIND method]], have been finished by their individual authors, independent of the formal working group.{{sfn|Whitehead|1998|p=39-40}}