Standards Organizations

IETF: Internet Engineering Task Force. Standards are named "RFCs" No formal membership requirements, primary work by electronic mail and quarterly meetings. No formal recognition as a standards body, but de facto body for Internet protocols. "Rough consensus and working code." Standard status requires at least two independently developed interoperable implementations.
ISO: International Standards Organization. DeJure in many countries (not U.S.) Formal membership required; technically by country standards organization. Late-comer to Internet protocol area, but responsible for SGML standard on which HTML is based.
ANSI: American National Standards Institute. U.S. standards obdy, member of ISO. Opening work items for electronic commerce, including merged VISA/MasterCard proposal (SET, Secure Electronic Transactions).