Comment by shiomiru

> I think something like a reference implementation (Ladybird, Servo or even Vaev maybe?) getting picked up as the small-web living standard feels like the best bet for me since that still lets browser projects get the big-time funding for making the big-web work in their browser too.

A "standard" should mean there is a clear goal to work towards to for authors and browser vendors. For example, if a browser implements CSS 2.1 (the last sanely defined CSS version), its vendor can say "we support CSS 2.1", authors who care enough can check their CSS using a validator, and users can report if a CSS 2.1 feature is implemented incorrectly.

With a living standard (e.g. HTML5), all you get is a closed circle of implementations which must add a feature before it is specified. Restricting the number of implementations to one and omitting the descriptive prose sounds even worse than the status quo.