I broke the cardinal rule and read TFA. From TFA:
"Hickson mentions that the group will be dropping the HTML5 name immediately, but it we have not received a confirmation that this will happen over at the W3C as well."
So WHATWG will no longer be using numbers? WHATWG can call it "Hullapuhjelpus" as far as I'm concerned as long as W3C still continues using version numbers. Version numbers provide excellent reference points to featuresets and are useful to implementers, developers, and end users alike.
From the WHATWG Blog:
"However, shortly after that we realised that the demand for new features in HTML remained high, and so we would have to continue maintaining HTML and adding features to it before we could call "HTML5" complete, and as a result we moved to a new development model, where the technology is not versioned and instead we just have a living document that defines the technology as it evolves."
Because there's demand for new features you no longer want to use a numbering scheme? Many standards are evolving. Why not just increment the minor version when new features are added? HTML version 5.1 added this cool thing, 5.2 this cool thing, etc.
If we're dumping version numbers then why bother calling it Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, and 9? Why not just call it "Internet Explorer"? We all know that each of those versions render pages the same, right? Hmm. I just realized that I invoked Internet Explorer in a discussion about standards. Mea Culpa.
How does removing the version number help the people who need to implement and work with the standard?