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I think you make an excellent and valid point.

On the flip side, developing a spec---for something as popular and accessible as Markdown---out in the open is an extraordinarily difficult task. I think one can definitely make a case for it being the right thing to do (and I mean that in more than just the ethical sense), but I also think one can make a reasonable case for not wanting to travel down that road either. I think it can be so difficult that there would be a very real possibility that it would never get completed.

(I'm sincerely not trying to be combative. I know I'm not really addressing your point---that they didn't even provide a status update---but I just wanted to provide a tiny perspective on the other side of the coin.)

I definitely see your point of view. Design by committee is enough to wear down the most passionate person. However, maybe they could have said a simple "We're actually working on a spec and two portable implementations (JS, C) based on the original article," and that might have gone a long way to prevent people from wasting their time.

But they tried to contact the guy and never obtained an answer. I'd vote to call it MarkAbove!

They've also unfairly appropriated the name "Markdown" and declared it "Standard", which Gruber is (rightly) not too happy with.[0][1]

[0] https://twitter.com/justin/status/507304506007515136

[1] https://twitter.com/markdown/status/507341395137658880

Ouch! He's defintely not happy, but I think there needs to be some more structure around the format. I love using Markdown, but it's annoying finding out what quirks work on different parsers. For example, GitHub supports hyperlinked images, but Designer New's comments don't. I think the spec has too many open ends and needs wrangling. I'm just not sure if this was the best way to go about doing it.

I don't disagree. I think they shouldn't have called it "Standard Markdown", though, as that's appropriating it. "Community-flavoured Markdown" or something would be far better.

Either way, they're forcing his hand. He's been sitting back while others have been simply trying to get a spec.

If he wants to be grumpy, cool. GH, SO, and Reddit will forge on. If we wants to litigate, cool too; bring it on.

Those 3 communities have large overlapping userbases. This baby is being born, Gruber or not, and nobody will remember in n years about the current kerfuffle.

> Either way, they're forcing his hand.

Which I think is good. Long overdue, maybe even.

It's good something like Markdown exists, and it shouldn't have had to flourish despite not having an unambiguous formalized spec.

> If we wants to litigate, cool too; bring it on.

He's got nothing to litigate about. The trademark claim on "Markdown" had no place in his copyright license, nor does that copyright license affect this specifications project in any meaningful way (because they don't use the copyrighted work).

That's why the only valid argument so far has been over the implications of the word "Standard" in "Standard Markdown" being a "dick move" (which is a personal POV, which is fine, which I also happen to disagree with).

>If we wants to litigate, cool too; bring it on

That would be a quick way to shut it down. Just threaten to sue anybody who _implements_ it.

And how would that work? Let's assume I wrote BrainFuckStandardMD, the implementation for Brainfuck. I would base it solely on the spec published as Common Markdown. I would not in any way use the copyrighted code as basis for my implementation, so it is not derived from it. I don't use the name markdown, so that even the ficticious claim to a trademark would be void. On what grounds would he sue me?

I don't think having a standard will in any way reduce the variance of implementations and which implementations (custom or otherwise) sites choose to use. Some wont want to support images. Some won't want to support inline html.

Hell, just look at C compilers!

There was an obvious, demonstrable need out there for implementation consistency. Gruber didn't step up to help resolve confusions, so he has no right to complain when other people do the hard work.

To the people voting down, please explain why you disagree. I am genuinely interested.

Well taking something someone else created and rereleasing it using relatively the same name while insinuating it's the official or standard version is what's known in the industry as a dick move.

Imagine if you forked GTK and named it "Official GTK" and then blamed GTK for not doing what you wanted them to, so its obviously their fault that you needed to steal their name.

Eh what? It has been industry practice for the last ten years to implement a Markdown parser and call it "Something Markdown" or "Markdown Something".

Standard Markdown is just that, it's Markdown but standardized. It's exactly the right name given what it does.

"Standard" carries with it a significant heft in meaning, especially authority, that "Something" else is unlikely to carry. Authority that is illegitimate without the original author's involvement.

I think the lack of the author's involvement in _anything_ in the last 10 years has cost him any authority he would have had.

Some names are descriptive, some are prescriptive. Just deal with it.

He told them no, which is still involvement.

He didn't get "involved", he just said get off my lawn!

It is kind of a dick move, and sadly this sort of thing (specifically, not respecting existing name usage) appears to be becoming more and more common. And sadly outrage from the community seems to be ineffective at preventing this stuff. Look at Google pilfering the name "Go" for their new programming language[1].

Yeah, it was a slightly different situation, but still, there was a name collision and in the end nothing was ever done about it.

[1]: https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9

Apple and Swift.

http://swift-lang.org/main/

I don't see how the two situations are similar at all.

Google didn't appropriate the syntax or standard for the original Go, they just used the same (extremely common) two letter word.

And I don't really see the problem there, there are a multitude of hobby and dead languages with names that may be duplicated in the future.

I don't see how you can not see that the two situations are similar. Note: similar, not identical. Google stole a name that was already being used in the exact same domain (programming language). Nobody said they borrowed the same syntax or anything, that isn't the point.

And I don't really see the problem there

And that is the problem. People don't care about somebody just coming along and arbitrarily usurping a name somebody else is already using. Of course they may see it differently one day when the shoe is on the other foot. But for now, there seems to be a trend where people don't care about resolving name collisions... and even more so if they're a rich entity like Google or Apple.

1-800-ITS-UNIX

Ha! Hadn’t heard of that number before.

Some background here for those interested: http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=6563

And for those who don't follow links: this was the phone number advertised by BSD Unix, a fork of AT&T's Unix, when BSD launched its own commercial distribution.

The resulting legal battle came to be known as "the UNIX wars", and resulted in a legal finding that AT&T had little to no effective copyright ownership of the BSD codebase (a few minor files IIRC). This decision was issued under seal, later broken in the subsequent SCO vs. IBM lawsuit of the early 2000s.

The contretemps has been argued as among the reasons Linux emerged and became as popular as it is: it was a de novo, fully independent, largely POSIX-compliant reimplementation of the UNIX environment that was good enough for those who wanted that sort of thing.

Imagine if you took a look at all the incompatible implementations of 1970's and 1980's C and blamed them for not being compatible, and created a fork called "ANSI C".

That'd totally suck, wouldn't it?

Generally with language standards though, the major players involved are all part of the standardization process. A slightly different example might be Microsoft developing an incompatible version of Java and calling it Java (until they got smacked into calling it J++ instead).

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that they can call it Standard Markdown if they want to and there's nothing wrong with that. Gruber's opinion is worth something for sure because of his authorship of the original, but there's a statute of limitations. He doesn't think Markdown needs anything more than his Perl script, but the rest of the internet has disagreed pretty strongly for long enough now that it's fine to treat him as absentee.

I realize that the "S" in ANSI stands for "Standards", but I think it is obvious to anyone who cares that the things which come from ANSI are produced by a non-profit national standards committee ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_National_Standards_Ins... ). As the Wikipedia page says, ANSI "oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel".

I don't really see this as a valid comparison to what the folks behind "Standard Markdown" are doing. I agree with others that the Standard Markdown name was a poor choice. For me at least, it feels like they are saying "We're taking over now". I don't know if that indeed was their intent, but that's the way it comes across to me. I think they should choose a different name.

For the record, I really don't have any skin in the game here, as the controversy doesn't really affect me much.

> I think it is obvious to anyone who cares that the things which come from ANSI are produced by a non-profit national standards committee

Which the "non-profit national standards committee" is just a collection of folks representing firms in the industries to which the standards apply.

That's an argument in favor of them making a spec, not an argument in favor of them using the name "Standard Markdown."

They could have called it any number of other things that don't make the same claims that "Standard Markdown" does. Off the top of my head; Common Markdown, Clean Markdown, or better yet don't actually use the Markdown name, simply imply it such as Forkdown or Sporkdown.

Maybe they can call it "Standardized Markdown" which would be both more descriptive and accurate.

That doesn't really address the main objection to the name "Standard Markdown" unless you already know what the problem with the name is (and thus the implications of the slight difference.)

It would be best if the team would just go another route entirely.

To be honest, I think this industry wide devotion to Markdown is hilarious, since to me it's a pretty garbage way of solving an easily solved problem. The main/only thing in its favor is its ubiquity.

Standard implies "normal" or "default" as well as "standardised".

Whatever you may think of Markdown (that is markdown as created by Gruber), it surely isn't unreasonable to suggest that if any version can make that sort of claim, it should be the original.

What percentage of all Markdown written is on GitHub, Reddit, or Stack Exchange? What percentage of rendered Markdown served to users is from those sites? Tough to estimate, but I would say it's certainly a majority. Surely any flavor of Markdown agreed upon by those sites can make a pretty strong case to be considered "standard."

Out of curiosity, what do you think is the better "easy" solution to the problem Markdown is trying to solve?

How would "Common Markdown" be any better than "Standard Markdown"? Doesn't it sort of imply the same thing?

(btw I'm in the camp that thinks "Standard Markdown" is just fine, though I do hope they get the formal specs nailed down a bit more solidly on the ambiguities discussed upthreads, preferably with some kind of formal grammar)

> There was an obvious, demonstrable need out there for implementation consistency.

I hear this sentiment a lot but I just find it unconvincing.

Over the past decade, Markdown became the lingua franca for transforming plain text to HTML. It did this entirely on the back of Gruber's spec, implementation, and the community that developed around the project. It hasn't had a formal spec this entire time and it's done just fine.

Are there some undefined behaviors in the original spec? Sure. But it was just designed to handle the most common situations, not everything.

While Markdown is certainly used widely and is based on Grubers original specification, the practical real-world usage is a lot more complicated that just relying on the original specification.

Reading Atwoods issues with original Markdown[1] (which is significant given his extensive experience in products that rely heavily on Markdown), it is quite clear that Markdown as a format has prospered almost in spite of the original specification.

[1] http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-future-of-markdown/

I can understand his point of view on the matter. He created something that is loved by millions, and he feels that this project is trying to wrestle ownership from him.

On the other hand, he created something. He released it to the wild, and then he didn't aptly respond to the need for it to change. His response to "Markdown needs work" is basically "Whatever! It's my project, you're not the boss of me!" How can he seriously be shocked that people would go around him to try and develop a spec that made more sense?

As to using "Standard" in the name, if Reddit, StackExchange, and Github all agree to use this Markdown spec, I think that there could be a reasonable argument that it is standard. In reality, they are wrestling ownership of Markdown away from Gruber. In a couple of years Gruber's Markdown will probably only be useful for historical purposes. Why? Because he failed to respond to the real needs of his users, so those users with the largest stake took matters into their own hands.

He's not shocked, he's upset something is calling itself "Standard Markdown" yet he, the creator of Markdown, did not have any involvement.

There's nothing wrong with making a standard, just don't appropriate the name.

But he was asked to participate and didn't want to. It is not as if they did the work in secret.

And that's his good right. Calling it "Standard Markdown" when he explicitly chose not to participate is just as childish a move as this: http://www.notmarkdown.com

It doesn't matter that he was asked to participate and didn't want to. What matters is whether he did or didn't give specific written permission that they could use the name Markdown. It's set in stone on the license.

> It's set in stone on the license.

Markdown-related projects have been using "Markdown" in the name for years (in violation of the license). Gruber has yet to get upset at "Github flavored Markdown" or "MultiMarkdown" for example. Methinks that it has less to do with the name, and more to do with their motive of becoming the new de facto Markdown spec that has Gruber up-in-arms.

   "github flavored markdown" sounds like a fork.
   "standard markdown" sounds like ownership. Not
   my project but shitty

"standard justin" on Twitter [1]

   That. Exactly that.

John Gruber in response to the above tweet [2]

[1] https://twitter.com/justin/status/507304506007515136

[2] https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507305771265454080

> What matters is whether he did or didn't give specific written permission that they could use the name Markdown. It's set in stone on the license.

If you're going to paste the very same argument multiple times all over this discussion, you should at least first make sure it is correct.

It's been explained several times now that this is not how that license works. It doesn't work (not binding) to specify trademark-related things in a copyright license. And anyway a copyright license only affects those bound by the copyright on the work: The work, being the code of Gruber's perl markdown parser. Which this group hasn't used at all. Usage of the name "Markdown" is something which has nothing to do with copyright but trademark law. Trademark law works very differently, definitely not by just writing up a license (like copyright) and simply said: The name Markdown is not trademarked (currently, and given its usage, also probably not in the future).

The license is to a specific work of software and applies to derivative works of it only.

Naming conventions specified in the software license don't apply to 1) non-software works such as a spec or 2) independently derived software works.

There's a great deal else concerning copyright/trademark confusion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8271548

> just don't appropriate the name

So, is it the use of "Standard" or "Markdown" that's the issue here? I don't see people complaining that "MultiMarkdown" is appropriating the name, for example.

"Standard". I don't think Gruber has a problem with "GitHub-flavoured Markdown".

Since when competition has become disrespectful? This is simply a degree of fault tolerance, ensuring that at least one of the two working groups would succeed.

I can't understand why private either. Asked Atwood directly at: http://talk.standardmarkdown.com/t/markdown-test-suites/158/..., let's see what he replies.

Goddammit, let's all take a vacation.