Re: Sections of the HTML5 specification being removed from the W3C without discussion

Simply in the way of comment, this situation is quite dismaying. I fear that
the less organized and stable the working groups and the process of
maintaining and generating the spec becomes, the more apt vendors are to
become inconsistent in implementation; this will directly result in fewer
developers adopting any of the new spec in the short term. Moreover, I think
the participation of Microsoft in the specification and adoption may
potentially be one of the single greatest boosts to innovation on the web -
the hours and dollars wasted on implementing cross-browser code can instead
be spent on forward development. If this process or the spec itself cannot
be organized, professional, orderly, and business-like, I fear vendors,
especially Microsoft, are going to see the incentive to play ball diminish
and we'll have another 10 years of continued dual- (or tripple- or nightmare
quadrupal-) development ahead of us to make this stuff work in the various
user agents. Taking ONLY that into consideration, I view this entire
specification and process as a pivotal moment for the web as a whole, and to
lose this initiative means stagnation for years to come.

I am loathe to make this comment; I am hardly highly-involved, I feel like
the peanut gallery. But I think I can say that I speak for a significant
number of developers when I implore, urge, beseech and beg you as a group to
take the necessary measures to pull this process back together and give us
something we can rely on. I'm game, I've started putting the more stable
elements of HTML5 out there on my client pages, I'm teaching new developers
about the newer spec and encouraging adoption in any way I can. I look to
the WHATWG *and* w3 to be the leaders here; we "field developers"" are
literally at your mercy. All the current momentum is not lost,  there's a
workable specification in all those documents with nothing less than the
future of the internet hanging in the balance - this is not melodramatic to
say. Your work is important, I appreciate all that has been done and look
forward to a return to order!

-Chris