Re: [whatwg/url] Provide a succinct grammar for valid URL strings (#479)

> As you are no doubt aware from your work on zone-IDs, nobody can require browsers to support any particular technology in any particular form. For URLs, it happens that the IETF's approach is not compatible with the reality on the web; hence this standard was created, and the IETF's standards are indeed no longer used.
> 
> This standard is created to fit the web as it is, warts and all. That is why producing a formal specification is tricky, the result is not as clean or clear as people may be hoping for, and it needs supplemented with various hacks to coerce it in to the correct result. The web grew organically, not systematically, and URLs certainly do show that.
> 
> Aside: personally, if I had a problem that browsers refused to implement some previous IETF standard (say, zone-IDs), and I specifically wanted to improve support _by browsers_, I would focus on building consensus within this forum (created by the browser developers for that express purpose) rather than bringing things up with a different organisation. 

That is the voice of power, which says "All of you must do as we think best; it is inconceivable that it should be otherwise".  The IETF does not have power; it has (Weberian rational/technical) authority, which is another matter.  Authority exists whether power respects it at any given moment or not (and, for example, the WHATWG has not attempted to redefine Unicode or TCP/IP in its particular style).  Land owners have power, architects have authority: their only right is to be listened to.  When power stops listening, authority does not vanish; instead, power loses its legitimacy and becomes no more than naked force.  Be advised by history.

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