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I suspect backwards compatibility has something to do with it. Old browsers probably ignore var- attributes. But something like @var quite possible makes IE5 or something throw fits.

Great, so in order to cater to the 1% of the population still using an archaic non-standard browser, we screw over the spec for the rest of time.

Sound logic, isn't it?

Yes. If the syntax breaks older browsers, many developers will avoid using the feature entirely.

Many, but maybe (probably) not most.

And any that do avoid using it now are always mostly lagards anyway.

Please realize that this proposal does much more than less/sass variables before you pooh-pooh it. e.g. it has to potential to work dynamically.

Which makes it more difficult (impossible?) to polyfill. For the time being, I see that as an anti-feature.

I wasn't involved so don't know first hand but suspect the gory details were discussed by everyone in the working group. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/. Or were you being sarcastic? ;)

As far as I know, no major browser even tries to support text/sass or text/sass for stylesheets.