http://css.dzone.com/articles/android-first-host-adobe-air

This is classic. Before anyone fully understands what the objection is and what it covers we get people claiming Adobe is attempting to block HTML5 because they fear it. They must maintain their “flash monopoly”, whatever that means. Hasn’t any of these anti-flash smart guys realize that Adobe might fully support HTML5 for one simple reason, Dreamweaver?

And AIR, but that’s beside the point. As Almaer said in the article (you did read the article didn’t you?), “Time to make a full public statement Adobe. That way we can just see the facts and not the speculation. Don’t make the Tiger mistake of not owning your own news. Folks are eager to jump on Adobe, so if they don’t clarify their opinion, people will read into it.”

This is no surprise. Web developers have been shafted by just about everyone involved at one point or another; the participants at both W3 and WHAT need to be aware of that and make a point to be more open about their positions and reasoning, lest they open themselves up to attack, both reasonable and unreasonable. If you think that’s an undue burden to place on them, consider that they are there by choice and that the decisions they make can place undue burden on millions of developers for years if not decades.

If Adobe has objections to some part of the HTML5 standard, and those objections prevent them from ratifying the relevant parts of the standard, it behooves them to clearly, publicly outline their reasoning. If they can’t or won’t do so, we are left to draw our own conclusions about their reasoning.

WHAT-WG members communicate privately, just like everybody else.

The mailing list is open to the public.

Considering that the Web is much more than just browsers, and considering that the W3C — despite its imperfections — has demonstrated good faith in this process, I think it’s a bit rich to immediately paint THEM as the secret cabal.

WHAT WG painted the W3C as a secret cabal?

You quoted Larry’s objection and even linked to the relevant page in the public arhive. The only person that seems to be confused about whether the objection is in the public domian is Ian Hixon.

The point is that WHAT-WG members — who make ALL of the decisions, ultimately — are a self-selected group of browser vendor employees (excluding Microsoft).

They say they take input (“contributions”) from the community and listen to the feedback, but ultimately they make the decisions about what goes in the spec, when the spec is published, as well as what goes into their browsers.

Considering that the Web is much more than just browsers, and considering that the W3C — despite its imperfections — has demonstrated good faith in this process, I think it’s a bit rich to immediately paint THEM as the secret cabal.

OTOH I strongly suspect that this whole situation is giving the anti-trust lawyers at Apple and Google little opportunity to sleep at night.

the WHAT-WG, being a smaller, invitation-only group of browser vendors

Really? According to whatwg.org:

“The working group mailing list is an open subscription public mailing list and anyone is welcome to contribute.”

On the other hand, W3C has closed mailing lists.

Where’s a good efficiently-run dictatorship when you need one?

Why at the WHATWG of course, where if it ain’t google/hixie approved you can go F yourself. WHATWG of course makes all their decisions in the “public” IRC space that those folks hang out in, and if you don’t frequent that channel almost 7/24, you’re likely miss out on those “open” decision chances. Blink, it’s decided.

Ya, much better solution….

This was so much ado about nothing. What a pretty picture the WhatWG and HTML WG present to the world with this little escapade. I don’t know about anyone else in both groups, but frankly, I’m embarrassed.