what does this do that couldn't be done with html5?
In other words, possibly nothing, but your original question may or may not be the right question to ask.
Is it me, or is this a sign the format isn't going to be open in any meaningful sense?
One of my side projects is a HTML word processor, and every time I look at a common Word processor feature, HTML offers a ton of free and easy to implement ways to make that feature better.
Dynamic @ Graphics @ Point @ ImageKeypoints @ CurrentImage[]
What does this do? It takes a video stream from your webcam, extracts SURF keypoints ("salient" parts of the image, like corners), and plots them live. Note that all those functions are online at reference.wolfram.com.
THAT'S A CDF! You have access to some heavy duty algorithms covering a vast number of fields. In fact its kind of surprising it fits in a few hundred megs. You're essentially getting the whole of Mathematica, for free.
Give me this:
stream = OpenVideoStream(device)
render1 = stream.surf() render2 = stream.sift() etc.
display(outDevice, stream)
If this doesn't take off, Wolfram dumps the project, removes the software from its website and other channels, and the documents are worthless.
If I invest in this, I'm betting Wolfram is going to boil the ocean or is going to be cost-insensitive regarding how much it takes to keep this available. Neither of those sound like good bets.
Yes, I've been saying that since about 1992. I'm not disagreeing with you, mind; I really like the idea of a lightweight WYSIWYG tool that lets me create complex documents without having to fiddle about with code.