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by domenicd 2576 days ago
Hmm, you seem to have skipped over some of my points.

The WHATWG is open to input from all, but only things browsers are willing to ship get into the specs. So yes, that's more power. No disputing that. But I would rather not have specs full of unimplemnted fiction, even if that fiction has consensus among paying member companies.

The W3C is not open to input from all. If you open a GitHub issue contributing an idea, but do not pay member fees, they cannot incorporate your idea into the spec, because of Intellectual Property Rights concerns. There is no way in the W3C to say "I sign over my IPR rights" without also paying thousands of dollars per year.

2 comments

> The W3C is not open to input from all. If you open a GitHub issue contributing an idea, but do not pay member fees, they cannot incorporate your idea into the spec, because of Intellectual Property Rights concerns. There is no way in the W3C to say "I sign over my IPR rights" without also paying thousands of dollars per year.

This is not true: https://www.w3.org/2019/Process-20190301/#contributor-licens...

> There is no way in the W3C to say "I sign over my IPR rights" without also paying thousands of dollars per year.

Or, as you mention up-thread, get invited into the group by the chairs and with consent of the W3C staff. Which… is an opaque process, and totally non-obvious to an outsider.