Ian Hickson, sole author of the HTML 5 specification, on standards in a recent #whatwg IRC discussion:
i think standards bodies are an outdated concept
Using the Firefox nightly, I was able to open an HTML5 document that contains a SVG graphic, and see it rendered, though the page was served as HTML. Wonderful! Unfortunately, running it through the HTML 5 conformance validator was less than joyful, which I’ll cover in more detail later.
For now, returning to Ian’s quote at the beginning of this post, I find it ironic that not only do we welcome, we demand that the browser companies be given free and unfettered reign to define the future of web standards, as they will.
Ironic, because if the web were any other industry—petroleum, pharmaceutical, airline, auto, electrical utility, and so on— allowing the companies who produce products in the industry, free and unfettered reign to define the standards for their industries, would draw howls of protests, and a demand for accountability.