I can’t speak for everyone else, but I am resentful that it promoted the Web as an platform for running applications containing arbitrarily-complex (Turing-comp

I can’t speak for everyone else, but I am resentful that it promoted the Web as an platform for running applications containing arbitrarily-complex (Turing-complete) code instead of a platform for exchanging structured (declarative) documents, I despise the philosophy of ‘backwards compatibility at all costs’ it follows, and the massive volume of standards documents it produces, all of which basically guaranteed the browser engine (quasi-)market would remain an oligopoly, by making it prohibitively expensive for new, leaner yet practical implementations to emerge (both because of the initial cost of catching up with the current state of the art and also of keeping up with the Red Queen’s Race of the ever-evolving ‘living standards’; just look at the sorry state of NetSurf). Not to mention the security holes their attitude engendered. If we moved to XHTML, maybe we wouldn’t have the meta-utopia Web 2.0 promised, but at least we wouldn’t have CVE-2020-26870. The WHATWG was formed as a cartel of browser vendors that pretended to be a standards body. And these days even ‘cartel’ may be too generous, now it’s just a Chrome rubber-stamping committee.