WHATWG

The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) is a community of browser vendors, web developers, and technology companies formed in 2004 by Apple, Mozilla, and Opera to develop HTML standards in opposition to the W3C's XHTML 2.0 direction. The WHATWG operates without formal membership, voting procedures, or patent policy — a deliberate rejection of the W3C's corporate governance model in favor of a living-standard approach in which specifications are continuously updated rather than versioned. The group successfully produced HTML5, which was later adopted by the W3C itself, demonstrating that technical authority on the web derives from implementation power rather than institutional legitimacy. The WHATWG's emergence is a case study in how browser vendors can bypass standards bodies when those bodies move too slowly for market competition.