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I'm so tired of this mentality that says basically, if you release something for free on the internet, you are obligated to maintain and support it for the rest of your life. Gruber created this program, for free. You are under no obligation to use it. Don't like it? Here's your money back. It may be true that the code is shit. If you think so, don't use it.

Like other responders, I worry that this mentality causes fewer coders to release their projects, for fear of backlash like this post. Think about it: Your feelings toward Gruber are incredibly negative and hostile, and in fact, you would have better feelings toward him if he had kept Markdown to himself and never released it at all. Does that seem fair to you? If the ill will generated by people like yourself outweighs the good will generated by those who appreciate the code I release, or if I fear that it might, what motivation do I have to release my code?

The problem is not that Gruber doesn’t want to maintain Markdown. If that were it, perhaps it would be easier to move on without him.

It’s that he thinks the best option is to do nothing. He claims the title of BDFL without playing the role.

See his first reply to the Markdown mailing list in nearly three years: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2012-Octo...

You have it absolutely correct

He enjoys the credit for being the creator of something used by millions every day, but is entirely unwilling to take the responsibility that comes with that creation being a very public mess.

It works for his usage, but all the ambiguities and undefined behaviors affect a huge number of people, and his only response he's made for eight years has been to retain sole moral authority and refuse to use it.

You gain moral authority by actually doing something. If you use markdown, and wish to propose a better markdown than markdown, go for it, I'm sure lots of people will be pleased, but bear in mind that lots of people will whine about any bugs as well, and expect you to work for them for free and spend significant resources and time fixing edge cases which don't matter to you personally, just because you released the source.

If you're ready for that though, of course go ahead and create a better markdown, or help with this proposed spec, Gruber certainly can't stop you. It doesn't really matter what Gruber says, what trolls on a mailing list say, or what you say on this forum about his responsibilities, whether he is self-appointed dictator for life etc (though I'd dispute that), what counts is putting the work in, which is often surprisingly difficult - far more difficult than criticism.

Of course you can do that. I think people's problem is with Gruber's unwillingness to lend any support to those efforts to create a less buggy implementation.

Right now, the canonical markdown implementation isn't very good. It's hard to change what the canonical implementation is without Gruber's support. It doesn't even require much from him - just his blessing.

He isn't under any obligation to do this. No-one thinks he is. But it would be a good thing for him to do.

Frankly, I don't think what Grubber says matters here, and I see why he wouldn't want to engage all the trolls who are enraged by his inaction. Markdown works for him and he prefers it simple if somewhat vague/buggy, if you need something different, build it.

If someone wants to write a spec, a better parser or a better markdown full stop, there is absolutely nothing to stop them. The problem is, people would rather bitch about why no one else is doing anything and complain about gruber than actually do the hard work necessary. Do the work first, then look to gruber for canonization if you must, though by that point his views on the matter would be irrelevant.

I don't think they're asking for lifetime maintenance and support. I think they're asking that if the author is aware of bugs and exploits, they should at least make the small effort to alert users who are still downloading their code.

If the exploits are as well-known as the grandparent comment asserts, and Gruber is aware of them, there really is no excuse for him to leave the code up without any warning that it contains known exploits. However, if he has no idea and everyone is assuming he knows without someone telling him, that's not exactly fair.

It is far easier to destroy than create. Or to put it in the vernacular of the times: haters gonna hate.

What an embarrassing post to be occupying the top of this thread. Blaming Markdown.pl for security flaws? I suppose the memory corruption bugs in the "optimized" C Markdown parsers are somehow his fault too?

He wrote a text-to-HTML parser with a particularly elegant little language design and got on with his life, which involves writing more than keeping up with bug reports in Perl scripts. Get over yourself; comments like this make us all look bad.

The punchlines were this:

unfortunately many of the other implementations out there are direct transliterations that replicate all of its absurd errors

he outright refuses to either disclaim or fix his implementation

This is important to know if you are interested in Markdown.

Personally, I encountered edge cases almost as soon as I started using it.

Except that the source code specifically tells you to report bugs to him.

We all write code with bugs and flaws and we sometimes release it online.

'Fix or deprecate' is not an unrealistic obligation on a technology journalist with a public persona and a large readership.

> What an embarrassing post to be occupying the top of this thread. Blaming Markdown.pl for security flaws?

I believe markdown.pl is being blamed for over 100 bugs. Not just security flaws.

> I suppose the memory corruption bugs in the "optimized" C Markdown parsers are somehow his fault too?

Strawman, you're better than that.

> He wrote a text-to-HTML parser with a particularly elegant little language design and got on with his life

And he did a horrible job of it. Horrible. But he considers himself the BDFL of Markdown. Break that down for me.

> which involves writing more than keeping up with bug reports in Perl scripts

He clearly can't keep up with any bug reports, so it's good his life is more broad than bug reports.

> Get over yourself; comments like this make us all look bad.

No, comments like this make us look like we have higher expectations than "it worked on my machine, suck a dick!"

> And he did a horrible job of it. Horrible. But he considers himself the BDFL of Markdown. Break that down for me.

Christ, you're being a dick. All John Gruber did to you was design a minimalist markup language and write a quick-and-dirty proof-of-concept Perl script to implement it. Just use a better implementation and get on with your day.

If that was all he did, it would be fine. But it isn't. His website still encourages people to use his script and his specification, even though they are known to be buggy. If you publish something on the internet and it turns out be wrong or defective, you have a moral obligation to point that out, especially if better alternatives are available.

> If you publish something on the Internet and it turns out to be wrong or defective, you have a moral obligation to point that out

No you don't, that's insane.

Is it insane to try and keep the good stuff from disappearing under the garbage? Have you ever searched for something, only to come across a multitude of pages that were just incomplete, wrong or otherwise useless? A search term for which the gems are buried under so much manure you need all your Google-fu to find the gem? How do you think this will play out in the years to come?

People like Gruber, with an audience, a following, should set an example. If his code has bugs and he is informed of those bugs, he should take a few minutes to list those bugs. He doesn't have to solve them. He doesn't even have to point people elsewhere. Just listing them is enough and saves a lot of people a lot of time. If you can't be bothered to do that, please take your code down: it is nothing but pollution, keeping us from finding the better code.

This submission, which suggests forking or standardizing Markdown, has currently over 400 points. My guess is that "just use a better implementation and get on with your day" is not a good enough answer for many of us, including Jeff Atwood and David Greenspan.

>> But he considers himself the BDFL of Markdown

Well he needs to be something other than a pathetic apple fanboy! :D

This would be a lot stronger argument without the ad hominem bits. He's obviously not so terrible if he created this thing that has people so up in arms.

I think there's something to your post, but the tone makes me want to dismiss it. I know, stupid emotions.

This internet lynch mob mentality... I wonder how much this discourages people from releasing things. So, Gruber releases markdown.pl. People like it. People love it. People use it, people reuse it, people rewrite it. Next think you know, he's being insulted on the internet because he released something he wrote to serve his needs and not passing on some sort of figurative mantle or blessing.

> He's obviously not so terrible if he created this thing that has people so up in arms.

Oh please, double standards like this disgust me. Microsoft had shit slung at it for years on end by the tech community because IE was terrible and held back innovation on the web, but no one claimed that IE is "not so terrible" just because everyone cared about it.

The difference with Gruber is that he's a darling of the tech community because he's Apple-anointed nobility. But as a programmer, in my eyes (and in the eyes of any other objective observers) he's absolute shit.

The reason Microsoft is dead to many developers (myself included) is that they used their massive corporate power to shut down good startups making cool stuff.

I didn't care that IE was terrible (until v3 or whenever), I cared that Microsoft went to all the major PC manufacturers and told them that their licensing deals were toast if they preloaded Netscape.

I didn't care that Word was a crappy word processor, I cared that they used their market position on office documents to make minor incompatibilities that prevented WordPerfect from interoperating.

I didn't care that Windows file sharing wasn't half as good as NFS, I care that they continually fucked with the SMB protocol so that no one could sell UNIX machines that could share with Windows networks.

It has been an absolute pleasure watching that Microsoft's power over device makers disappear. The world is better off for it, and Microsoft will always be an asshole in my book.

Well thank god we don't have any platform owners today making changes that screw over developers.

There's a differenc between trying to maintain app store policies that strike a balance between security, end user interests, developer interests, profitability, etc. and intentionally putting bugs in your OS to break third party products, stealing third party products and building them into your OS, or bundling free products with your platform or office suite to drive third parties out of a market.

Agreed that the difference exists--that says nothing though about who's practicing what these days.

No, the difference is that Gruber is a person whereas Microsoft is a corporation. Corporations aren't subject to the same social mores - it isn't hurtful to say something nasty about a corporation.

Abandoning basic etiquette that you should have learned in primary school and calling someone "absolute shit" is not cool.

While I agree that calling somebody that is not cool, I think you'll find that product owners at corporations do take it to heart when harsh criticisms are called out. They identify with their output.

The thing is this isn't something new, I and a number of other people have been enraged by this for eight years now.

Over those years it's grown in usage exponentially, and so has his fame as a sportswriter for team Apple. Throughout that period he's continued to brush off all kinds of attempts to clean up bugs, define ambiguous behavior, or fix the security vulnerabilities. It hasn't mattered what approach people have taken, he just does not give a shit. Here's an example from last week: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2012-Octo...

He's spent so long burning off any goodwill I would have for him on the matter, being cordial just isn't a priority anymore. NERD RAGE.

You've been enraged by the handling of a text-to-HTML converting Perl script written by a tech writer?

You're right: he just does not give a shit. I can see why. What possible upside could there be to engaging with someone who handles themselves like you are here?

You've never been enraged by poorly written tools or technologies? There have been times I wished I could reach through my monitor and throttle some well-meaning idiot for wasting hours or days of my time.

Imagine that you're a mechanic working on a motor that uses the ProprietaryNew fastener (hex heads? so 20th century!). Unfortunately, the only ProprietaryNew wrenches are made out of cheap metal, and the sockets strip with regularity. You can't imagine saying a few nasty words about the parentage of everyone in ProprietaryNewCo?

Gruber has a long-standing money-back policy

What about a time-back policy?

You have not yet attained the Zen of HN :(

Actually I think he does give a shit, he just feels that things could be a lot worse than they are and tinkering isn't necessarily going to improve things. Given how widely used it is there is some merit to this argument.

From a comment on Twitter yesterday in response to someone, it doesn't seem that Gruber is particularly interested in engaging with this (though I may be wrong). If that is the case I suspect we'll see a forking of the project and we'll get to see whether a committee will do better.

It may well do - Jeff has a good track record at getting things done and is well respected and well liked - but personally I wouldn't put my mortgage on it because as well intentioned as these things are we all know how design by committee usually turns out.

"Enraged" huh? For "_eight years_"?

Care to show us your alternative? It'll be on Github or GoogleCode, or maybe your personal blog, somewhere we can download it, try it out, and criticize it too, right?

Surely 8 years of rage is enough encouragement to write your own replacement for ~1000 odd lines of Perl?

Or by "enraged", did you mean "annoyed enough to write critical posts on random internet sites, but not motivated enough to spend an evening or two solving the problem myself"?

"NERD RAGE" indeed…

There are many great reimplimentations, another would only compound the interoperability issue.

The real problem cannot be solved without some forward action on his part. He has refused over and over again.

"The real problem cannot be solved without some forward action on his part."

Sure it can - you write something better, then get everybody who's already using Gruber's version or one of it's presumably also-flawed reimplementations to switch to yours. Or, is "8 years of enragement" really just keyboard-warrior-hyperbole on your part and an excuse to criticize someone who's achieved widespread adoption of some code you claim is 2nd rate, but which haven't bothered to improve or replace?

Besides, it sounds to me like David Greenspan has come up with a fine solution.

This is bot a privilege issue. Nobody appointed Gruber. Just do a better job and you'll be fine without his permission.

> He's obviously not so terrible if he created this thing that has people so up in arms.

Being great at designing a format and writing code are two different things: one can be great at once while being terrible at the other.

The perceived simplicity of the format (driven by the naivete of the implementation) played a significant role in making it popular, but lays a minefield of bugs and ambiguities for implementors especially if they want any combination of sanity and interoperability.

Wisest thing in this thread.

It is a great format.

The original parser (and specification) has serious problems.

I find it disheartening that the top voted comment is so blatantly rude. I'm not sure what is gained by calling John Gruber a terrible programmer and maintainer. If you want to praise Jeff Atwood for taking over the stewardship of Markdown, great.

Go read Markdown.pl, and then consider the millions of uses it's had in the last eight years with neither maintenance, guidance, or abdication.

At some point there's no constructive criticism left to give.

His program is bad and he should feel bad

Christ, maybe I should pull all my open source projects that I no longer work on down from github for fear of people actually using it and then complaining when I don't maintain it indefinitely.

The dude released a script to the public under a free software license and people used it. If you think it's bad, fork it and fix it, otherwise don't use it, that's how the open source ecosystem works.

There are a dozen MarkDown implementations that are better than Grubber's piece of shit, and a couple that are actually nice. The lack of a decent implementation is not the issue. This issue is that Gruber is (regrettably but naturally) seen as the authority on MarkDown by a whole lot of people, and he's still encouraging them to use his insecure, bug-ridden disaster instead of pointing them in the direction of something that anybody outside of his use case would ever want to use.

He just needs to add a sentence or two to his website and he'll save countless developers a ton of headache. He just doesn't give a shit.

It's pathetic.

Yes, you should take down such projects if you have been informed of problems and can't or won't take the time to document them. Infinite maintenance is a straw man, because that wasn't requested. Only some civility was requested.

Your project can cost people a lot of time if it promises, but doesn't deliver. I just spent quite some time searching for a decent XSD parser in Ruby, haveing to wade through a score of projects that promise to do what I want, but turn out to be incomplete, buggy or otherwise useless to me. Many people will perform the same quest and together a lot of time is wasted, which could have been prevented if people would not just publish any damned thing, but would also take the time to properly document its state.

Open source projects without proper documentation, I can do without. This problem will only become worse in decades to come. I sure as hell hope github will start purging old projects with too many 'not useful' votes within the next few years. Otherwise it'll be a morass of stink where the gems can no longer be found.

I thunk the point he's trying to make is that if Gruber doesn't want to maintain Markdown, that's cool. However, he should announce that and let the community take over.

Grow up.

Get over yourself. The guy wrote something that suited his own needs and released it so that others could use it too if they wanted. Programmers ported it to other languages because they liked the idea and wanted to see it thrive -- I've used the PHP port in many homespun web apps over the years. Is it perfect? No, and no software is. But when I've needed a script that easily converts line breaks and hyphens into paragraphs and unordered lists (the normal use case I've taken advantage of), it's done the job every time.

> Is it perfect? No, and no software is.

You may want to look into seL4. (If you consider formal verification to be perfection, that is.)

This is one of the reasons Why left the programming community. People are not thankful. Even if you release a great idea - with obviously _not_ the best code - the one thing you get is criticism. Maybe also the words that "you are the worst programmer on earth" following the words that "you put your family in such a shame".

You know what programmers think because of such comments? "My code is so bad I can't release it. Even if the idea is good." And this Sir helps no-one.

Stop this shit.

> You know what programmers think because of such comments? "My code is so bad I can't release it. Even if the idea is good." And this Sir helps no-one.

I agree. This has even stopped me from __starting__ a few FOSS projects I've wanted to develop.

Out of curiosity, what do you do now?

I assume he means http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff

That's why I write it _why, as it's unambiguous (and well, "_why".camelize him?)

Thank you, my bad, I misread

Gruber's Law: the highest upvoted comment for any Daring Fireball link or Markdown discussion on HN will tend to be a repulsive ad hominem whinge.

What I love here is that not just satisfied with running down Gruber, you also feel the need to get in a little swipe at Jeff ("as much as [he] leaps at every chance to play the fool"), a man who seems broadly in agreement with you (though is far more constructive in his approach).

Stay classy.

>>John Gruber's original Markdown.pl is one of the worst small programs

Perl makes it look small, if you have to write something like this in Java or Python, multiply the LOC by at least 20. But I assure it will be higher.

No. I was curious and checked - this: https://github.com/waylan/Python-Markdown is slightly below 3k loc mark (2977) excluding extensions, and by the look of it it's much more heavily commented (I didn't strip blank lines or comments at all). Markdown.pl has 1450 loc.

So - no, bullshit, you need to multiply by 2 at most in case of Python :)

Another interesting comparison would be with the Text::Markdown CPAN module which is Gruber's original code & comments converted to an OO interface with POD documentation added + bug fixes.

This comes (including blank lines, comments & POD) to 1739 loc - https://metacpan.org/source/BOBTFISH/Text-Markdown-1.000031/...