Ian Hickson decided it’d be a good idea to do away with the HTML5 time element and replace it with the more generic data element. Bad idea in my opinion, but OK.

A couple days after that decision was made, the W3C added the time element back to HTML5.
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Webmonkey explains some issues with how the time element is currently outlined:

While Hickson’s move to toss time out was probably premature, there are nevertheless some problems with . The element offers the ability to add semantic meaning to pages by marking up dates and other time data, but not all use cases have been covered and some gray areas still exist. For example, the code <time>2:30</time> could refer to a time of day or perhaps the length of a movie. Both are theoretically valid uses and figuring out the details and the various potential use cases, is exactly what the HTML WG wants more time to do.

I’m just glad to have the time element back. HTML5Press uses the time element in a number of places, pretty much every place a time or date is shown. I was not looking forward to going through and replacing time with data. Looks like I won’t have to now!