Is the W3C HTML Working Group approach to Invited Experts an exception?
Yes. While other groups have Public Invited Experts, no other group has, or encourages, the participation of as many. For this Working Group, W3C believes that the benefits of engaging a large community in this work is important to the deployment of the specification, and thus will benefit W3C as an organization, including all its Members and those who participate as Invited Experts. Accordingly, the principle that “Public Invited status is not normally granted to individuals employed by organizations which have significant business interest in results from W3C” has been relaxed in the case of the W3C HTML Working Group.
