Web standard stagnation

In Party like it's 1996, Tim Bray equates the changes proposed by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group with the proprietary html extensions of the 90's browser wars.  In The non-world non-wide non-web, Brendan Eich explains why the w3c is not an effective forum for moving web client technology forward.  Jon Udell also sees the WHATWG as an opportunity to create forward motion in web applications. Forward motion is the point. With the IE team showing signs of life it may well be another war but maybe that's exactly what's  needed. I'd rather see the IE team, goosed by Mozilla and Opera, compete on standards AND extensions than to have them hold out for Longhorn. By then the WHATWG's work would be the de facto standard. Even without competition from IE it will be much farther along than anything we'll ever get out of the w3c.