Why are there two competing implementations for the future of web markup - XHTML 2 and HTML 5?

Why are there two competing implementations for the future of 开发者_如何学Cweb markup - XHTML 2 and HTML 5, particularly given that HTML 5 appears to have an XML-compliant counterpart XHTML5?

From Wikipedia:

In 2007, the W3C's HTML working group voted to officially recognize HTML 5 and work on it as the next-generated HTML standard. In 2009, the W3C allowed the XHTML 2 Working Group's charter to expire, acknowledging that HTML 5 would be the sole next-generation HTML standard, including both XML and non-XML serializations.

This is the second time I've posted this link on here today :)

Comic strip answer:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/29/misunderstanding-markup-xhtml-2-comic-strip/