Ok at the risk of being further down voted, I am going to have 1 more crack at this.
It's not which. It's Unix and Linux as a whole.
This is exactly my point, I don't believe there is a Unix or Linux as a whole. Sure, there are Unix-like and Linux-like OS's out there and if you know 1 then you can easily adapt to using another. That is the point, you have to adapt. That is why unified standards are a good thing, you ideally only have to develop once.
Uhm, Unix and Linux do own the world. Desktop PCs are an anomaly in the computing world
I know exactly what anomaly means. We are just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I would argue that before the Desktop PC revolution, computing was niche and elitist. Desktop PC's opened the world of computing to everyone and hugely accelerated the take-up and rate of innovation in all things computing. Additionally this Desktop PC revolution was driven by IBM, Intel and Microsoft, not Unix/Linux.
But personally, I trust Mozilla and Opera; if they felt the creation of the WHATWG was important for the development of web technologies, then it's a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
I am not going to argue this one as I am not going to be seen as bad mouthing Mozilla or Opera, especially as I am a huge fan of Firefox and have great respect for both companies. Perhaps I am just old and scared of change but I fail to see how forking or branching HTML5 standards can possibly be a good thing. Browsing and HTLML5 in particular is an important foundation in future development and I just hate to see standards possibly diverging in this.