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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

What "position"? He is a prick.

He created something that got popular (and which was derivative itself, in the first place, but anyway), and when people try to standardize and fix its flaws, he objects.

Any decent, non-prick, person in the tech world that I know of would be happy and flattered to have his 10+ years neglected project be improved, standardized and fixed, and either he would get involved in the process, or say "sorry guys, I don't have time, but I wish you all the luck".

This prima-donna behavior means he should be left out for any future discussion regarding Markdown and ignored.

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> and when people try to standardize and fix its flaws, he objects.

No. He is only objecting to the name. He holds rights to the name[1], similarly to Linus Torvolds holding rights to "Linux"[2]. Anyone can fork Linux, but forks lose the name unless Linus approves. Otherwise the name loses meaning and value fast.

Would you call Torvolds a prima-donna? And if he is, has that been a good or bad thing for Linux?

[1] http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/license

[2] Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22Linux%20is%20a%20registered%20t...

I'm not sure what you're comparing here...Linux is a registered trademark, Markdown is not. There really is a big distinction here, so comparing them as equals doesn't work.

"You do not have to register a trademark to use one or have legal claims (called common law rights)"[1][2]. Sure, registered trademarks provide some additional strength. I said "similarly" for a reason.

Nevertheless, we're talking about who's being a "prick" here, and being a class-A prick has nothing to due with the law. The "Gruber is a prick" vs "Atwood is a prick" debate has been done before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4716322. If they had stuck with the idea to name it "Rockdown", there would be no problem. In fact, we can now see that Atwood is being dishonest when he says:

> "We then waited two weeks for a response. There was no response, so we assumed that John Gruber was either OK with the project (and its name), or didn't care. So we proceeded."

Gruber had already responded TWO YEARS prior with a "No!"

FWIW, I don't like Gruber. But that's not a good reason to overlook Atwood's dick moves.

Maybe it's time for a little humor? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8272614

[1] http://inventors.about.com/od/trademarks/a/register.htm

[2] http://www.uspto.gov/faq/trademarks.jsp#_Toc275426681

From the link:

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.

I believe that a spec is a derived product, at least partially, from the code?

Not a valid comparison. Torvalds still actively rules Linux in every sense. If he'd just created it then buggered off leaving it half-finished, then complained when other people tried to finish it, then yes, he'd be a prima-donna/prick.

I don't think being against standardization automatically makes you a prick.

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