The HTML Working Group has made much progress on HTML5 and related specifications. The HTML Working Group Chairs and the Protocols and Formats WG Chair have been asked by the W3C Team to provide a credible plan to get HTML5 to Recommendation status by 2014. Challenges remain in achieving this goal. We sought to produce a plan that achieves this date and that has minimal risk of delays from unexpected events.

We'd like to now propose our draft plan to the HTML Working Group for consideration. Here are the key points of our plan:

• Revise the draft HTML WG charter to indicate an HTML 5.0 Recommendation in 2014Q4 and an HTML 5.1 Recommendation in 2016Q4.
• Use Candidate Recommendation exit criteria to focus testing where it is advisable (e.g. new features), without wasting time on testing where it is inappropriate (such as when interoperability is already proven on the Web)
• Use modularity to manage the size and complexity of the specifications while reducing social conflict within a constrained timeline:
  • Gain agreement that the remaining open issues can proceed via extension specifications at first. Provide an opportunity to merge extension specifications back into the baseline spec upon getting WG consensus and after the extension specifications meet their Candidate Recommendation exit criteria.
  • Welcome the option of extension specifications that don't merge back at all and instead proceed at different paces and possibly even with different Candidate Recommendation exit criteria.

We invite the HTML WG, the Accessibility Task Force and the PF WG to review this plan with an open mind and provide feedback.

SOURCE

http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/html5-2014-plan.html