This is poison and against everything the W3C is set to do according to their own mission statement.
Everything we've spent the last 20 years building and standardising. Now ruined. Tainted.
They have now lost all legitimacy among anyone who calls themselves a proponent of the open web. We need a new leadership as the old one can't be trusted. We need an open web action group to start over.
Thanks for fragmenting the web, W3C. Thanks for nothing, assholes.
The W3C was always a pay-for-play organization led by corporate interests. The full time staff of the W3C were MIT academics trying to foster conversation so that the openness of the web could be preserved among the reality that most funding for browsers was between competitors looking to make a buck. It took enormous pressure and nearly a decade (1994-2004) to foster web standards to the competent mediocrity they are today.
The WHATWG only solidified the corporate interests, by making browser makers The Only Ones Who Matter: Google (who also funds Mozilla), Microsoft, and Apple.
You can claim you want new leadership, but who has the credibility and legitimacy you claim has been lost? Students? Government workers? All competent engineers are working for for-profit companies (or are funded by them) that want to monetize your eyeballs. You could look to academia and government-funding, I suppose, like the original web. But the web is here, now. It's likely not going to be replaced.
Everything we've spent the last 20 years building and standardising. Now ruined. Tainted.
They have now lost all legitimacy among anyone who calls themselves a proponent of the open web. We need a new leadership as the old one can't be trusted. We need an open web action group to start over.
Thanks for fragmenting the web, W3C. Thanks for nothing, assholes.