Switching to HTML5 is so stupidly easy and simple, it really should be done.
Just change in overall_header.html
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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">
to this:
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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
Of course, to get it to validate at the W3C you have to make a few more
minor tweaks, like:
- removing some of the obsolete <meta> tags
- removing the obsolete "name" attribute from anchor tags, and instead use the ID attribute as an inline anchor point
Although this also raises the question: is validation even necessary anymore? Go to any major site: github, google, cnn, youtube, twitter - try validating them. None of them pass. I think validation is only valid these days for web designers with bosses they have to please

Anyway, you don't HAVE to use the new HTML5 tags to be an HTML5 site

Of course, a future version of phpBB (maybe v4) should be HTML5 from the ground up, making use of the new HTML5 tags. By then, the really old browsers will be so much older they can finally be ignored. And if not, there are plenty of ways to make them HTML5 aware, such as with the MODERNIZR or HTML5SHIV js plugins.