Because WHATWG does not have W3C type of IP policy not all organizations can participate in the WHATWG. While I don't represent an official corporate request, I submit that the WHATWG should not be considered to be equivalent to any W3C working group unless the same IP policy is in place so that all companies/organizations can freely participate in the process of the WHATWG. 
 
Personally, I appreciate the work the WHATWG is doing in trying to balance between existing web usage and providing solutions for the future.
 
Regards,
 
Paul Nelson

________________________________

From: www-html-request@w3.org on behalf of Henri Sivonen
Sent: Mon 10/30/2006 5:56 PM
To: Charles McCathieNevile
Cc: Lachlan Hunt; WHATWG List; W3C HTML
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Tim BL's HTML WG announcement and WHAT WG




On Oct 29, 2006, at 19:16, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

> So what comes out will probably be a (perhaps evolved) version of 
> WHATWG stuff, as has been the case in some other W3C groups already.

That would be excellent.

Perhaps I was overly worried, because I couldn't tell from the 
announcement where this is going.

>>> Or will the WHAT WG activities continue with an endorsement from 
>>> the W3C?
>
> I would be very surprised. As Tim notes, the WHATWG doesn't have 
> what he calls "accountability measures" (by which I think he means 
> a process with more of the checks and balances that are found in 
> W3C's), which would make it hard for W3C to endorse anything WHATWG 
> have yet to do.

I don't expect the W3C to endorse the WHAT WG itself. What I meant to 
ask if the WHAT WG spec drafts continue to be worked on under the 
banner of the W3C.

--
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/