The World Wide Web Foundation, scheduled to launch early next year, will "advance a Web which is open and free," Berners-Lee said at a Washington, D.C., event. The foundation will promote democracy, free speech and the freedom of users to access the online content they want, he said. It will also push Web standards and interoperability.

A major focus of the foundation will be to provide Web access to the 80 percent of the world's population that is not currently online, said Berners-Lee, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He acknowledged that the goal is a "very big undertaking," but said it's important for the Web to benefit all of humanity.

The Knight Foundation will provide $5 million in seed money to help launch the foundation.

-Grant Gross