The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) have signed an agreement which says that the two groups will collaborate on the development of a single version of the HTML and DOM specifications. By working on the same specification, W3C believes that it will be beneficial for the community as developers can follow one set of rules when developing products.
The collaboration between the two is the result of WHATWG more closely aligning with the W3C back in December 2017. Going forward, both parties have agreed to a set of terms, they include:
- W3C and WHATWG work together on HTML and DOM, in the WHATWG repositories, to produce a Living Standard and Recommendation/Review Draft-snapshots
- WHATWG maintains the HTML and DOM Living Standards
- W3C facilitates community work directly in the WHATWG repositories (bridging communities, developing use cases, filing issues, writing tests, mediating issue resolution)
- W3C stops independent publishing of a designated list of specifications related to HTML and DOM and instead will work to take WHATWG Review Drafts to W3C Recommendations
Discussing the agreement, W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe wrote:
“I am pleased to announce that W3C and the WHATWG have just signed an agreement to collaborate on the development of a single version of the HTML and DOM specifications. The Memorandum of Understanding jointly published as the WHATWG/W3C Joint Working Mode gives the specifics of this collaboration.”
With the two groups delivering single specifications for HTML and DOM, there should be less confusion for developers going forward and work on new standards may progress more quickly with more community members inputting into the work.