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Comment by dewitt | Hacker News Reader

> Org-mode looks very similar to markdown. Almost so that I would call it pointlessly different.

Just a minor note on this: Org-mode was created in 2003 (the syntax a bit earlier) and Markdown in 2004, so I think this was a case of parallel evolution, each unaware of the other, not intentional deviation.

Edit: And the use cases were different. Org was designed as a syntax for an outliner, and Markdown was designed as a syntax for prose. Both are plain text and optimized for readability in their pre-processed form, but maybe it's the fact that they are so similar that's remarkable.

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In his original documentation for Markdown, Gruber acknowledges an number of influences. Mostly common plaintext email conventions of the time, but also Setext, reStructuredText, and more by name.

He did not include reference to org-mode, so he probably did not know of it at the time. (Although maybe Aaron Swartz was familiar with org-mode, and provided cross-pollination?)

Most likely as you mentioned, md and org both evolved independently from similar ancestors

https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax

The point is that as soon as one project looked like it was gaining critical mass, the other project should have conceded defeat and adopted the winning format. Because as we all know, the major problem with open source is there can be more than one of something.

They do not have the same features, and undoubtably the reason for that is because some users needed features the other doesn't have.

That is a ridiculous notion. People like myself escaped to free software in order to avoid the imposition of a vision by a single corporate entity, like you have with MS/Apple.

People are not uniform, they don't all like the same music, books etc. so why should this not be true for tools?

you are implying that there is a standardized markdown flavor. pretty much every parser forks the "standard". even though markdown-ish is more common than org-mode, i don't think there is a clear winner here. common standards do emerge from open source, but we have to let the competition play out until the end. and tbfh, you aren't playing the game correctly if you just give up and die without overwhelming proof that your project in irrelevant.

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