There's an active thread in the HTML WG email list about including a
reference to the WhatWG HTML effort[1].
The W3C is a legal entity, while the WhatWG is not. The W3C has a patent
policy, while the WhatWG does not. The WhatWG is nothing more than an
informal group of people contributing to the current HTML5 effort. As
such, it is inappropriate for the W3C specifications to reference the
WhatWG effort. For one, as noted in the HTML WG thread, the effort at
the WhatWG differs from the effort at the W3C and for the W3C to
seemingly condone such differences will cause confusion within the web
communities. For another, there's an implication that User Agents will
implement both the WhatWG and W3C specifications, which is most likely
not true because of legal issues, such as lack of patent policy and
legal entity status of the WhatWG.
Consider the following, in the W3C HTML5 specification status[2]:
"The contents of this specification are also part of a specification
published by the WHATWG, which is available under a license that permits
reuse of the specification text."
Though I'm not a lawyer, at a minimum, this causes confusion about the
legalities of use of the material: who exactly does have legal control
over the material?
Regardless of legal issues to do with the WhatWG, the W3C has put off
the issue of this problematic "shadow" specification for far too long. I
formally object to any published HTML5 specification--including the
upcoming heartbeat publication of the HTML5 Working Draft--referencing
the WhatWG documents and email lists. Removing this material will have
no impact on whatever work continues to happen in the WhatWG, but should
prevent confusion about W3C support.
As for the charter wording about working for convergence with the WhatWG
effort [3], removing references to the WhatWG version of email lists and
specifications does not preclude both groups from working together.
Listing the WhatWG effort in the acknowledgments should be sufficient.
Shelley Powers
[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Jun/0189.html
[2] http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/#status-of-this-document
[3] http://www.w3.org/2007/03/HTML-WG-charter.html#conformance
