Who regulates W3C or WHATWG web standards? Or neither?

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I always thought that whoever ran the standards was just the W3C, but it seems that’s not quite it... I saw that there is also the WHATWG (The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group)

After all, who regulates web standards is the W3C or the WHATWG? What’s the difference between them? There’s one who rules more than the other?

I always thought the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) regulated everything, didn’t I? Or no one regulates anything and the standards are actually a convention and are not mandatory?

I know it sounds basic, but I don’t quite understand why two regulatory agencies.

html html5 w3c

  • @hkotsubo is still an interesting rss query. I believe that are the rules to be followed. The documentation has the rules of the standards... But will the regulator is absolute? Who regulates the regulator

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    I don’t think there is a regulator-master (or this is what he wants: that we think it doesn’t exist):-) But the WHATWG website has a brief history of motivations for its emergence: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/introduction.html#history-2 - just do not write an answer because I do not know all the details so well...

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    I found an interesting link https://www.w3.org/2019/04/WHATWG-W3C-MOU.html

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    @Icaromartins I was just reading a post on the W3C Blog about this https://www.w3.org/blog/2019/05/w3c-and-whatwg-to-work-together-to-advance-the-open-web-platform/ is a short version of this Memorandum. Good tip!

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    @hkotsubo conspiracy theories are always welcome ! I will read the link

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Reading the Wikipedia it seems that WHATWG is a group that has been formed to make projects move faster by forcing the W3C to accept that this group exists and to start working together or in a way delegate to it the decisions that would then only be made official, at least that’s what happened.

It is common for these regulatory bodies to have working groups, the difference being that it was born spontaneously to confront the main body.

This kind of thing will always be defined by those who act in the market. As a comparison, there is an owner of Formula 1, but if the teams and pilots that act and hold the fame leave and do something else, only leaves the brand and various contracts with who puts the money emptied (of course if they get similar contracts, it doesn’t always work, Formula Indy happened this, created 2 categories and the two ended up sinking over time, but it was another level). So if whoever makes the main software on the market that allows the web to work decides to operate differently from those who in theory own something on the web, it’s gone, the official agency loses meaning. So Microsoft did what they wanted for a while. People complain today, but she had the browser that dominated almost every use of the web and could do the way she wanted, and did, including things that made the web become a platform, and nobody wanted initially, and start competing with Windows, very ironic.

The W3C still regulates, it is official, but now relying mainly, at least in part, on what WHATWG determines. If they fall out again goes on WHATWG, It is not official, but it is the real boss, in the end W3C will have to give in. It’s a shame it had to happen this way.

Can’t an organ of people who don’t take care of what happens to actually determine directions. Do you know what is put in the pattern of C and to some extent of C++? What compiler creators, libraries and basic infrabasic things of these languages have done or are doing. Standards should only exist by real forces, not by "academic" imposition, which was and was much at the beginning what happened with the W3C and so we suffered a lot, mainly with CSS. If it had been created organized by field engineers it would not have so many problems.

Discussion. Arrangement.

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