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IDPF Close to Finalizing W3C Merger

During a tense community meeting at Digital Book World on Wednesday, the executive board of the International Digital Publishing Forum announced that an agreement finalizing its merger with the Internet standards organization, W3C, was weeks away.

Although IDPF executive director Bill McCoy continued to call the merger agreement "aspirational," he acknowledged that a final agreement between the two organizations was near. IDPF board president George Kerscher said the merger would assure that there will be no “fork in the EPUB standard, it will be a rock solid world standard maintained by the W3C and the publishing group within the W3C, and have more resources than we have at IDPF.”

Nevertheless, McCoy and the rest of the IDPF executive board face continued challenges to the merger by OverDrive CEO Steve Potash, founder of the Open E-Book Forum, the predecessor organization to the IDPF, who has mounted a campaign to block the merger. At the meeting, Postash continued to call on the IDPF to delay the merger for six months to search for what he calls an alternative plan.

Board members declined to delay the merger and made pointed efforts to rebut Potash’s anti-merger claims. In particular, McCoy was forced to respond to accusations made that details about McCoy’s post-merger employment by the W3C and “six-figure salary” (including commissions based on individual IDPF members taking full membership in the W3C) were not communicated to members.