Every now and then something comes up so wrong that it's time to put aside my pleasant retirement from the web standards process and get out the high horse again.

[...] The W3C process hasn't worked in HTML5. Partly it's because HTML5 is managed by two separate organizations, the W3C and the WHATWG. As the WHATWG site puts it, "The W3C HTML working group and the WHATWG are working on the same specification, with the same editor." That editor, Ian Hickson, is not only editing a document, but "is acting as a spokesman for the [WHATWG] group."

So what now?

Ideally, I'd like to see the W3C take its consensus-based process seriously, and the WHATWG agree to abide by that. Realistically, I just can't see either part of that happening. The W3C is too willing to bend; the WHATWG too unwilling. That seems to leave two options:

• The W3C continues its wobbly HTML5 process, lending its imprimatur to a specification over which it has little real control, or

• The WHATWG decides that the W3C's imprimatur isn't worth the effort of the process, drops the cooperation with the W3C, and fractures the HTML world severely.

I suspect that in the end, the WHATWG will take choice #2, likely because W3C members (like Adobe) rightly insist that the W3C behave like the organization it's claimed to be all these years. After all, no less than the Chair of the W3C HTML Working Group has called in the past for "A Bias For Action"

[...] HTML5 will be damaged, its credibility weakened, but will still be important, one way or another.