History of Web Packaging

Roughly:

2006: The Web Application Formats (WAF) Working Group publishes Web Applications Packaging Format Requirements . Subsequent work forgets about this document and doesn't consult or reference it.
2014: W3C TAG designs a format similar to multipart/* MIME to make it possible to bundle several resources together: https://www.w3.org/TR/2015/WD-web-packaging-20150115/
Late 2016: Chrome's emerging-markets team proposes to expand the spec to work for peer-to-peer sharing and content distribution, by adding an index, sub-packages, and signatures: https://github.com/WICG/webpackage/blob/@{2016-11-02}/README.md
2017-03: jyasskin moves the package structure from multipart/* to a binary format: https://github.com/WICG/webpackage/blob/@{2017-03-30}/README.md. Authors sign a list of hashes of package resources plus version constraints on sub-packages.
2017-07: Packages presented to IETF99, with https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yasskin-dispatch-web-packaging-00.
2017-07: W3C TAG recommends that syndicated content systems like AMP adopt Web Packaging.
2017-08: A use cases document is published, and the design is split into signed single responses and "bundles". This loses the ability to require that different resources have compatible versions.
2018-01: Safari expresses concern, and Mozilla expresses opposition to the plans.
2018 March-October: W3C TAG review
2019-03: Chrome ships the "b3" version of signed exchanges.

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