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I'm with Gruber and Arment on this. It's really simple. Markdown is Gruber's name. So he's the only one with the authority to say what "standard Markdown" is. Atwood and company should just rename their spec and be done with it.

EDIT: To be really classy, after the rename, redirect standardmarkdown.com to Gruber's Markdown home page.

> he's the only one with the authority to say what "standard Markdown" is

And he utterly refuses to do anything to actually improve the clarity of the original document and make it easier and more obvious to determine how parsers should behave.

> Atwood and company should just rename their spec and be done with it.

It's kind of upsetting that they didn't. If they'd chosen another name, there'd have been no controversy.

I agree they should rename, and after they rename, no one will give a crap about Markdown anymore.

Remember Hudson? Maybe you've heard of Jenkins? Exactly.

All the big players who make use of Markdown are on board with this. If they all adopt this "standard" whatever it's called, it will effectively spell the end of mass usage of "Markdown" as it stands now.

That's why this keruffle is so stupid. Then again, renaming will take away the attention from the stupid yelling over the name, so maybe they should just do it and deprive them of it. Call it Sparkdown or Harkdown or something so the connection is still apparent and move on.

> I agree they should rename, and after they rename, no one will give a crap about Markdown anymore.

I doubt that. RSS is still widely used even though Atom has the more precise specification.

> Call it Sparkdown or Harkdown or something so the connection is still apparent and move on.

FWIW, Gruber has explicitly endorsed this approach: https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507590561172176897

I'm not sure RSS vs. Atom is a good comparison. As far I understood it, Atom was created to address the limitations in RSS with a fresh approach, not simply to further refine behavior in a loosely specified format.

And while I'm aware he wants them to do their thing with a new name (an argument I can agree with for sure), I think he'd probably still complain about a connective name (e.g., Sparkdown). I don't know for sure, but given his posture to this whole thing throughout the process, it seems likely. At that point, though, I think they could justifiably just give him the proverbial finger. :)

EDIT: Turns out I was wrong. He gave them a list of similar names (with Markdown in them no less!) in a recent e-mail.

> Markdown is Gruber's name. So he's the only one with the authority to say what "standard Markdown" is.

Except when "X" is legally a trademark, its not uncommon for "Standard X" to be defined by an entity independent of the creator "X" without needing approval from the creator of "X".

Where "X" is a trademark (e.g., "JavaScript"), things are a little different, but I don't see a convincing argument that Markdown is Gruber's trademark.

What really kills me is that Gruber, Arment, and other ranters in that clique (e.g. some well-known tech journalists) have attached themselves to a larger design-driven philosophy. A pillar of this includes the notion of "it just works". Now, looking at the real-world problems that standardization efforts are aiming for, we have:

1. Markdown had a design and ecosystem which largely let it win an overwhelming majority of mindshare against other lightweight markup contenders.

2. As the ecosystem of websites, apps, and users of Markdown has grown so has the desire to have Markdown participate in workflow with a lifecycle outside of more than one app. In all likelihood that means there's more than one Markdown backend involved.

While Markdown may be "done", it no longer completely "just works". This brings us to:

3. As multiple different standards efforts[1] have said, they'd like to solve the interoperability issue for their apps and Markdown's users. So, that generally means a standard.

Markdown has been a de facto success with wide adoption. This creates a sense of community ownership. I'm unclear as to what's really going on with @gruber, but I can't wrap my head around his apparent failure to sensibly interact with the community around Markdown that wants to address these issues. Even if that interaction were just "I don't want any. Please rename and fork." (EDIT: apparently that has in fact been said[2].)

[1] At least: the W3C group (now defunct) and Standard Markdown.

[2] https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507590561172176897

> The fact that this whole charade is over one word "standard"

There are only two words and you picked the wrong one. The issue is about the word (and apparently, trademark) "Markdown". They can call it "Standard Rockdown" if they want.

> I'm sure that Gruber could have politely sent

Come on. Gruber said he didn't want people to use the name and instead they should create their own flavor with their own name.

They could also call it "BigCo flavored Markdown" without issue, so the word "Standard" does seem to be a major part of the controversy.

How would you like it if someone else decided to take your Project/creation's name without your permission (and explicitly against your license), make extensions to it and call it the new "Standard"?

> From everything I've read so far, Atwood seemed to want Gruber on board but got crickets instead.

Also don't see how an invitation to the original Author to join your new initiative should legitimize it in anyway.