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I think that it would be appropriate to simply forget the "Mark" parlance and Gruber all together.

Everyone understands there is a Markdown ecosystem, but quite frankly this is the start of something new.

End-users also need an easy to follow name and site to learn the syntax.

I like the names SmartText or SimpleFormat or even perhaps CommonMarkup.

It isn't something new, it is a strongly specified, highly compatible implementation of Markdown. As seen in "common" use on large websites. And any implementation that passes the current spec tests can also brand itself with CommonMark or "Markdown compatible".

Mr. Atwood, you may be too kind. I see this as a chance to bring Markdown to a larger audience by not only standardizing it, but also renaming it as well.

In this endeavor it would appear that you are giving too much credit to Gruber. It is unfortunate that he was not one to be more gracious in the matter.

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