August: "Maybe it's time for the W3C to look at the consortium aspect and address concerns about "openness", perhaps by having an auxilary to provide the kind of structure and governance that would not require something like the WHATWG to exist."
September: W3F
1 Comment
I don't think that's the goal of the W3F; AIUI its function is to provide an additional source of funds and a locus for some of the research (read: semantic Web).
I don't agree with the implied statement that there's a requirement for the WHATWG to exist; all that it does is act as a venue that can be used to play the W3C into accepting terms it wouldn't normally. It's a particularly aggressive form of venue shopping, IMO.
That's not to say that the W3C is always a good place for new standards in its current form (especially the new breed of lightweight standards built on top of HTTP/Atom/URIs that we are seeing more of); the OWF demonstrates that others feel this pressure too. The interesting question to me is what role the existing standards orgs -- particularly the IETF -- have in this.
I say the IETF not only because of the concerns that you and others have with the W3C, but also because protocol work is more naturally at home there. Despite its flaws, it has a proven track record, good technical resources and it hits the right notes process-wise, provided you can wade through the RFCs.
Cheers,