In practice, any attempt to change these basic specs would be diverted to be to the benefit of Google and its ilk, with the power they have to steer conversations and decisions. It's an accident of history that we ended up with these fairly open and hackable systems as the basis for the Web, and it's at a delicate point where a lot of companies are annoyed that they can't silo and close down more of it.
So the unfortunate reality is that any well-intentioned attempt to reform them would be used instead to reshape them for corporate interests, with no guarantee that we even end up with better specs from a developer point of view. The incentives lay in the direction of guaranteeing corporate interests, with users losing more of their freedom to choose how they access and use the Web; the developer concerns will at best be used as a PR front for the press headlines.
So the unfortunate reality is that any well-intentioned attempt to reform them would be used instead to reshape them for corporate interests, with no guarantee that we even end up with better specs from a developer point of view. The incentives lay in the direction of guaranteeing corporate interests, with users losing more of their freedom to choose how they access and use the Web; the developer concerns will at best be used as a PR front for the press headlines.