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Comment by callum85 | Hacker News Reader

I think you've got it backwards. It would be less decent to give it an new name and forget its origins. Calling it Standard Markdown waives any claim to have created anything new. It makes it clear this is merely an effort to standardise the language Gruber famously invented. It gives all credit for origination to him.

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I'm 100% certain I don't have it backwards. Gruber is still alive, so you can ask him if he wants it the same name. Oh, they did; he said no. Not honoring the original inventors wishes is in direct opposition to propriety. It will cause me to file trademark against any open source project I don't want to lose rights to. Seriously, how am I the only one who doesn't think this is f^#&^%d up?

I hadn't read the stuff about Gruber not wanting them to use the same name before I wrote my comment. But I still don't think it's 'fucked up' in the slightest. It actually sounds like Gruber is being irrational and a bit of a dick, from his comments that I've just read. His behaviour seems weirdly lame for someone capable of such good design. If he wanted to, he could have trademarked it, but he chose to give it free to the world and just sort of hoped that it would stay roughly in a shape he would like. Resisting standardisation is a weird thing to do. His notion that ambiguity is a feature is a dumb one. I think this is all relevant to the discussion about whether it's decent/honourable to use a similar name against his wishes. If his wishes are anti-progress, then tough luck, people are going to progress things if they can. He chose not to copyright/trademark anything. He can't have it both ways.

He did copyright everything. Explicitly. In a very short license where one third of the conditions of use was:

>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.

Standardisation doesn't lock it down, it just establishes a central flavour. It doesn't force Github to use the standard. Github can keep using GFM. It still benefits Github and others for there to be a well-defined standard which they can use as a base for defining their own variations against.

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.

You can't copyright a name, which seems to be his main point of contention judging by the public responses he has offered.

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.

If you create an open format without any standardization, what do you expect? Does every implementation of markdown need Gruber's blessing? They're not stealing his idea or anything. He's given proper credit for inventing markdown in the first place.

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.

Given that it'll have StackOverflow, GitHub and Reddit behind it, that's definitely a large enough boost (or at least a large united front) to have this flavour be dominant. What does that Venn Diagram look like, I wonder: SO, GH, Reddit inside the whole online Markdown community.

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.

Then they should call it Big Site Markdown. Calling this a standard takes regular, varied, simple, use-case-specific, optimal Markdown away from the rest of us.

But if you say your system uses "Markdown" then that's zero help for someone who wants to submit to you a complicated Markdown document for processing.

Ambiguity is not a feature it is a bug. It is not optimal.

> But if you say your system uses "Markdown" then that's zero help for someone who wants to submit to you a complicated Markdown document for processing.

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.

If you want to submit a big document for parsing make it LaTeX or HTML.

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.

Funny, I had a blast writing a 30 page report with R Markdown, which is extended to hell and back (Math support, tables, graphics, whatnot).

You can make it clear that your implementation isn't the "official" one without denying credit. See e.g. Iceweasel; it's very clear that a) it isn't Firefox b) it owes a lot to Firefox.

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