would love to hear Gruber's take on this.
During that podcast, Gruber encouraged that group to consider not calling what they were doing Markdown. Something to the effect of, "Come up with your own thing, and see if it catches on." He noted that the ambiguity is probably what has made Markdown useful to such diverse groups with different needs, and should be preserved.
John Gruber's stance was a little stronger than this - he currently has a reasonable claim to the trademark Markdown, as a term he coined and popularized for this use. This group's use of the brand "Standard Markdown" to describe something the owner of "Markdown" disagrees with seems ill-advised. He's now forced to either try to push them off the name or effectively abandon the trademark to genericization.
But if people implementing their own markdown processors try to write a spec or grammar for what they are implementing... he is not fine with it, and considers legal action? It's okay to write a markdown parser, as long as you don't write a spec for it?
There may be a way to justify that position rationally, but I doubt there is legally. He's already abandoned any claims to trademark, by making it clear he's okay with people making their own markdown parsers and describing them as 'markdown parsers', without his permission.
If they made this an called it StackMark it would be fine.
But this feels more like a power play. Like when Microsoft came and made Visual J++ in an attempt to take control of Java from Sun. It seems oddly and unnecessarily mean spirited and hostile. The name seems designed to either engender confusion or as a slight against the original.
We've got Disqus, Stack Overflow, GitHub, and others. John has referred in the past that he doesn't mind how GitHub has GitHub flavored mark down. This new one could be called Atwood flavored (to pick a name I know is involved). Or they could have stuck with GitHub Flavored markdown and just expand the GitHub flavor.
further, its just the name of a spec, should the owner of a spec really be expected to continuously hunt down and test/validate every implementation of their specification? that doesn't exactly seem possible in the slightest.
I don't think he would have trademark protections for something like this for other reasons, I do wonder if there is anything similar that applies in this situation
I'm pretty sure thats exactly what trademark law says you have to do. You have to defend your trademark. You can't go ten years letting everyone use the Markdown brand where ever they want, and then suddenly decide one day you want to start controlling it.
Coining and popularizing a term is not a basis for a reasonable claim to a trademark. Trademark rights stem from one source: bona fide use of the mark in the ordinary course of trade. If its not used as a mark identifying and distinguishing the source of a product in commercial transactions, its not a trademark.
> He's now forced to either try to push them off the name or effectively abandon the trademark to genericization.
If there was ever a good claim that it was a trademark (which I don't see the evidence for), I think there's a pretty strong claim that it has already been lost to genericization, given the long-standing established uses on a variety of unlicensed implementations with differing sources.
I am excited for a well-documented, standard Markdown format to be the top link on Google.
Just several hours to sift through :)
"Atwood's crusade"
It definitely seems shitty to take the name of his project without his permission, regardless of how righteous they think the cause.
A much earlier lengthy email response from Gruber around 11/2012 evaluated each of the changes Stack Overflow and GitHub made to Markdown one by one (there were some he agreed with) and essentially said "ambiguity is a feature" at the end.
We disagree about that.
Using (basically) the same name strikes me as somewhat hostile given the views Gruber has expressed, and likely to cause confusion to end users.
Because it communicates the right thing to users >90% of the time. If you learn the language specified here and then go write some reddit comments or file a GitHub issue using that language, it will do what you expect.
The few places where it doesn't you probably don't have an intuition about anyway.
If you treat "markdown" as an improper word describing the language and not some sort of proper "brand name" that describes provenance, then what they describe here is "markdown".
It would do the same thing if all those groups (since they seem to be onboard) had decided to call it TextMark or CommentAscii or some other new term. As long as they all use the same term it would be fine.
But instead they're basically trying to strong-arm redefine Gruber's name, and they'll win because they're bigger.
It's in terribly poor taste.
This will actually make things worse too, because they've invented another standard. People will see 'old' Markdown sites that don't work like 'new' Markdown sites ('Standard' is too subtle) and ascribe it to a bug in 'new' Markdown.
They haven't avoided confusion in the way a new name would have done very quickly.
Same confusion, acting like a jerk to take over someone else's creation. High class there.
IANAL.
I would avoid this wording. I would instead say:
It's a flavor of markdown. The flavor is heavily documented. The flavor's name is "Standard Markdown".
My problem with the name "Standard Markdown" is I don't think it's going to be clear enough, I think people will think it's the same thing as Markdown (which it's not), under the theory that "non-standard" would have an obviously different name such as "Lisp Markdown" or "Japanese Markdown".
If they had used a word other than "Markdown" I wouldn't have a single problem, I would cheer them on.
I don't see a real benefit in this name to anyone, but I see serious downsides.
That's certainly an unbiased translation :rolls eyes:. If you want to have a good-faith debate, you should avoid tendentious re-writes of your interlocutor's arguments.
You clearly don't like his position.
Be he has explicitly chosen not to make a specification, he's had years and numerous requests. From what I've seen/heard John Gruber likes that it isn't formalized with a spec.
So if a group of people, especially a large group with 10s of millions of users (at a minimum) decides to write a spec and name it "Markdown" over Gruber's wishes it sounds like trying to take ownership from him.
My phrase was glib, but I don't think it's that far off from many of the comments expressed here.
The reasons that he didn't write a spec after requests is very likely post-hoc rationalisation, behind the simple reason that writing a spec is not a fun task.
As I read it, if you want your Markdown documents to be rendered a specific way, you choose/configure/write a Markdown parser that renders it that way (possibly with the assistance of an additional stylesheet). If you need a particular extension for a task (tables, syntax-highlighted code blocks) you can use an parser that supports them. And if you need specific HTML elements, you can use them inline.
The way I read it, Markdown is intended as an _input format for markup tools_, designed to be both legible and meaningful as plain text. Any meaning that can't be explicitly encoded in the ASCII format, including the specific HTML tags used to render a given construct, is outside Markdown's scope and should probably be stored in a more structured format.
Not cool.
The difference here is that they wrote a spec for the variation they plan to implement? That somehow makes it not cool?
Or just that they're calling it "Standard Markdown"? Could the dispute be avoided if they called it "A Standardized Markdown", or "Standardized Flavor of Markdown" instead?
There are many markdowns, and Gruber likes that, fine. Other people would like to standardize and make compatible implementations. Nothing's stopping people who disagree from continuing to ignore the standardized spec. But where' the logic in saying "you can release whatever markdown variations you like, as long as you don't try to make different implementations compatible with each other."
Standard markdown lies about where it comes from and thus claims more authority than it is due. Formalize it all you want, then name it coding horror markup.
I don't see how stealing other peoples credit is acceptable.
He can still choose to be caustic and demand a rebrand, but it'll only delay the inevitable replacement of the original markdown.
And if you're doing that, it's pretty obvious to call the effort to produce a standard implementation Standard Markdown. Unless you think Github-StackOverflow-Reddit-flavored markdown is a better name :)
>Neither the name “Markdown” nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
Gruber is not being irrational. He is operating under a different paradigm, which he explained last time Marco Arment was on his podcast. He is approaching this from the view that the optimal markdown implementation for a code site like GitHub is different to the optimal markdown for a commenting site like Reddit. Standardisation just locks in a suboptimal implementation for everyone. Whether you agree or disagree, it's at least a rational viewpoint.
The creator of the project let you do anything with it other than use the name markdown for a derivative product. They went ahead and did that. A completely unreasonable move that is just spiteful.
This has nothing to do with my view point, it's simply a fact of law: you can't copyright a name. No matter what text you put somewhere says, it doesn't magically apply.
Documenting your own Markdown flavour will be easier if you can say "It's Standard Markdown, plus/except these features...", instead of "It's part of the soupy world of 'Markdown', but here are the features that some/all other implementations don't have...".
> He did copyright everything. Explicitly.
I didn't realise that. In that case he can force them to change it if he doesn't like it, right? I don't get why people are talking about honour/decency.
Another way to look at it is this is just another implementation of markdown -- one that some of the bigger names in the markdown-business are going to support moving forward.
Gruber seems to be a bit of a dick about it. Maybe he got surprised and it hit him harder than expected today. No surprise though, he's now about to be usurped. He sat on his hands for years. In the release today (and forever) they give him large amounts of due credit. The Talk Show crowd (I'm a listener) will grumble, and fanboys on Twitter will support him and jeer Atwood personally, but oh welp. There's one party actually advancing technology, the other resting on laurels.
He kind of mentioned being a benevolent dictator on the [podcast 88 discussion](https://overcast.fm/podcasts/episode/344902019595#t=4527), but what important decisions has he actually made lately? It seems to me he just points back to his implemention perl script. Genuine question. He hasn't made a spec because (loosely) "why have a spec; just do whatever you want, take a look over here".
So it's a variant of his perl script. Great, that sounds exactly as he mused everyone should do. I can see how it rubs him the wrong way with "Standard Markdown".
Also: by doing this, the group will be forcing his hand. They've released it magnanimously, invited him to be a part of the process for years. He didn't respond in kind, labeling it "Atwood's crusade".
He may not like the name "Standard" enough to do something about it. He can choose to pursue legal options. I doubt he wants to spend any money on that. You've got to assume GH, SO, and Reddit went over the Markdown license on DaringFireball.
He can choose to be grumpy about it, but this is happening. Those 3 entities have massive persuasive force with their user bases; enough to become standard.
Ambiguity is not a feature it is a bug. It is not optimal.
This "Standard" makes things even worse. There are plenty of sites already on the internet that say they accept "Markdown", and that meant something: that it implements Gruber's formatting, and perhaps some extensions (and sites with extensions are normally clear about the fact that they're extensions, e.g. "Github-flavoured Markdown"). Now people will see a site that accepts "Markdown", expect it to support a feature from "Standard Markdown", and get angry when it doesn't.
Markdown is not for that and the exact reason to use it is that every site could customize it for their usage. Contrary to your assertions (which I see is backed by no argument) abiguity in markdown is a feature. Ambiguity in HTML was a bug.
I don't see a problem.
Edit: In case what I am writing is misunderstood, I am not trying to be snarky or negative. I am just curious.
No ambiguity, no 500 different things called XMarkdownY
admittedly the worst example for such a topic, but, we still don't have a situation where all browsers agree on all renderings, and all of them still don't follow the spec, and in some areas, they don't plan to.
I can see html requirement being a pain-point for anyone implementing standard markdown.
Reducing user confusion is one possible answer, but I expect if you are going to argue that, you end up with the name not mattering because most of the users aren't even aware of it.
My point is that there are tens of millions of redditors that aren't. I would also guess most light users of Stack Exchange sites are not very aware of the name.
For all those people, I don't think the name matters. Also, the heavier, more interested users will likely not be disrupted much by a different name.