The MIME Sniffing, Streams, Console, and Quirks Mode Standards are all edited by people who are not working for the browser-engine-developer companies. (Streams is co-edited by Googlers as well.) That's 4 out of the 15 standards currently developed at the WHATWG; not so bad, given how few companies are willing to pay people to work full time on web standards.

Of course, we have lots of work to do, and if you or anyone else are able to devote a good chunk of time to standards work, we'd love to have more editors---no matter what company they work for.

Browser engine developers comprise the steering group, since ultimately we want the specs to reflect what will be implemented in web browsers, so the best way to resolve disputes about what should be in the spec is by asking the people who will be spending their resources to implement it what they think. I think this is probably the right way to go, instead of "The Director" having the final voice.