mcchampion

> If they choose "not to ratify" something... will it have any effect on browser behavior at all?

W3C has no authority to change browser behavior, no. But they CAN influence browser behavior by providing expert assistance to promote W3C's traditional values (accessibility, internationalization, privacy, etc.) in WHATWG.

We'll have to see if W3C's ratification or not has an impact on the larger web ecosystem, but it would probably get key customers' (and regulators) attention if W3C refused to ratify changes to HTML, DOM, etc. on accesibility or privacy grounds. Browser developers may respect W3C's supposed authority to set standards, but they definitely do respect the opinions of customers and authority of regulators.

W3C did try to balance multiple constituencies for HTML, but it couldn't find consensus among them, and broad consensus is the basis for its authority. WHATWG didn't so much take control of the standards process as recognize that what actually works on the web defines the "stadard"

It's not a capitulation, it's a way to exert influence in a world that respects rough consensus and running code more than formal processes and authority. Under the agreement, W3C has the power to ratify (or not) changes to HTML/DOM that align with the needs of its broad community for accessibility, internationalization, privacy, security, etc. The agreement provides a way for experts in those "horizontal" areas to participate more effectively in WHATWG to get improvements made upstream, rather than downstream in what amounted to a fork.

And yes, W3C provides the service of providing vetted snapshots of the Living Standards into more formal standards that governments and other standards bodies can reference and ratify. That's adding real value for some constituencies.

I don't think the W3C DOM document has anything the developers haven't agreed to. The problem is that it's an incomplete, intrinsically out of date, and often buggy subset of the the WHATWG living standard.

I agree that the W3C value proposition COULD be to publish a snapshot that describes what's actually implemnted. That might be a way forward here, but it requires a lot of work to define what "actually implemented" means in a useful way, and to check the test results and update the document (or build an automated way to harvest resources such as https://wpt.fyi/dom ).

How would one convince the others to re-invest in W3C HTML and DOM? Microsoft's rationale a few years ago was that WHATWG wasn't a real standards organization with a patent policy, dispute resolution system, etc., and that created various legal and business concerns.

It turned out to be much easier to add a legal framework to WHATWG than to convince the HTML and DOM standards community to move back to W3C. Basically, people work on specs (and code) together in the places where there is a critical mass of expertise and energy being productively engaged. The key variable is the people, not the organization.

I don't understand the dynamics of how these critical masses of expertise coalesce, break up, and move around. I have learned that it's much more efficient to go with the flow than try to redirect it.

> If browser makers would actually participate as editors

Microsoft tried that, investing in easier to use GitHub tooling to allow a wide range of people to submit pull requests to update/fix bugs in the W3C HTML standard. "If you build the field of dreams, they will come...." Nope. "They" had all gone to WHATWG ballpark, and all the W3C editors do is cherrypick (that's the actual word in the HTML 5.2 Recommendation) WHATWG's specs. It made a LOT more sense to just join WHATWG for HTML (and DOM).

> > The W3C actually does do some good work in other working groups

Right, W3C as a whole does a lot of good work. CSS is a good example, Web Payments, Web Authentication, Web Assembly come to mind as groups where a broad group really does come together and build consensus on how to solve hard problems. The HTML and DOM communities, however, have moved to WHATWG for reasons that happened long ago and apparently can't be un-done, even if a company with Microsoft's resources tries.