The purposes of the LaTeX3 system can be summarized thus: it will greatly increase the range of documents which can be processed; and it will provide a flexible interface for typographic designers to easily specify the formatting of a class of documents.
The LaTeX3 Project Team is a small group of volunteers whose aim is to produce this major new document processing system based on the principles pioneered by Leslie Lamport in the current LaTeX.
The major work of the team before 1997 was the release and maintenance of the current standard version of LaTeX: the one you have just acquired. They will continue to maintain this system, releasing updated versions every six months and recording these activities in the LaTeX bugs database (see below).
Although LaTeX may be distributed freely, the production and
maintenance of the system does require expenditure of reasonably large
sums of money. The LaTeX3 Project Fund has therefore been set up to
channel money into this work. We know that some users are
aware of this fund as they have already contributed to it--many
thanks to all of them! If you want to know more about how you can
help the project, see Page 
--and thanks in advance for
your generosity in the future.