
OMG Markdown - ot
http://spinhalf.net/omg-markdown/
======
jarjoura
The fact that this whole charade is over one word "standard" because it
seemingly takes control away from Gruber rubs me the wrong way.

Jeff Atwood and co have done nothing but praise Markdown. They've worked
really hard to flesh out a starting point for a standardized Markdown
implementation. I think the word they chose, "Standard" makes perfect sense
here.

Instead, both John Gruber and Marco Arment are acting super immature about the
whole situation. Reading their Tweets today I keep imagining them stomping
their feet on the ground because someone did something they didn't approve of.

I don't mean to add fuel to any fire, but I really think we shouldn't be
validating their overly-dramatic behavior. I'm sure that Gruber could have
politely sent Atwood an email or even public tweet asking that his project
reconsider a better name, maybe even calling it something like "Rockdown."
From everything I've read so far, Atwood seemed to want Gruber on board but
got crickets instead.

~~~
mwcampbell
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.

~~~
jeremymcanally
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.

~~~
edavis
> 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](https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507590561172176897)

~~~
jeremymcanally
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.

------
todd8
I think it's worth noting that TeX was standardized and frozen by Knuth (at
version 3.14159...). I recall that Knuth wrote that it was important to have a
documentation format that didn't drift over time so that in the future TeX
would properly process documents written many years before.

Knuth also protected the name TeX. There have been a number of important
packages that run on top of TeX, for example LaTeX and ConText and even
enhanced implementations of TeX itself, like LuaTeX, pdftex, and xetex;
however, only Knuth's TeX can be called "TeX".

It seems that this has worked out for TeX, something similar could be done for
Markdown.

~~~
tbatchelli
I don't think Knuth would be happy with "Standard TeX".

In my mind, the problematic part is of "Standard Markdown" is "Standard", not
the composition of "X Markdown". "Standard Markdown" makes it the real
Markdown for most people, and that is the problem, that it feels like you're
trying to steal the work from the original author, not build on it.

~~~
aaronem
> I don't think Knuth would be happy with "Standard TeX".

Perhaps that's because Dr. Knuth actually _standardized_ TeX, unlike what
Gruber did with Markdown.

------
pkamb
> Standard Markdown is now Common Markdown

[http://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-
common...](http://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-common-
markdown/)

[https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/507672066540453888](https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/507672066540453888)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8271327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8271327)

------
autarch
Serious question ...

What do you do when the founder of a project becomes an impediment to its
progress? Gruber is clearly the creator and popularizer of Markdown. OTOH,
he's been uninvolved in anything related to it for years (AFAICT).

The corollary to this question is to what degree the founder of a project
"owns" aspects of the project (code, name, etc.) after they drop out. I'm not
asking about legal ownership but rather moral ownership.

~~~
arrrg
This is real simple. You don’t get to appropriate the name just because you
wanna. Maybe legally you can under some circumstances, but ethically it’s
completely and utterly bankrupt. I cannot even fathom how anyone could even
get the idea to appropriate the name and the project in that way. It shows a
complete lack of respect and decency.

Naming it something different is very simple. Really, very simple.

~~~
Zarel
I think it's way more complicated than you're making it sound.

So, these things happened:

\- Gruber announces Markdown, and releases an implementation in Ruby and some
basic documentation

\- Someone ports Markdown to a different language. -> is it okay to call it
Markdown?

\- Said implementation differs from the original implementation in some minor
ways, although it still matches the documentation (which is vague enough).
This might not even be intentional; it wouldn't be the first time any software
has had bugs. Or it might be intentional fixes of actual bugs in the original
Ruby implementation of Markdown. -> is it okay to call it Markdown?

\- Other people port Markdown to other languages. Said ports become more
popular than the original Ruby implementation, such that pretty very few
people who claim to use "Markdown" have actually used said original Ruby
implementation. These ports are all subtly different from each other, although
they still match the documentation (which is vague enough).

\- A bunch of people decide to create better documentation (since said
original documentation has been vague enough to cause problems with
interoperability) -> is it okay to call it Markdown?

After answering these questions, I'd encourage you to replace "Markdown" with
"HTML", and imagine how that originally went down.

~~~
arrrg
I’ll grant you that if this were named Something Markdown it would be much,
much more subtle. But it’s _Standard_ Markdown FFS. That’s definitely not ok.

~~~
Zarel
Again, I'd encourage you to replace "Markdown" with "HTML" and imagine if your
beliefs would still be consistent.

Do you think NetScape should have claimed to support "NetScape-flavored HTML"
rather than "HTML"? Do you think the WHATWG should have announced "WHATWG-
flavored HTML" rather than "HTML5" in response to lack of action from the W3C
(actually a very similar situation to what happened here).

------
pkamb
> However, Standard Markdown does violate MD’s BSD license:

> 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.

> So does MultiMarkdown. So does Github Flavored Markdown.

This is what I don't understand about this uproar. The word "markdown" has
been used in multiple products and offshoots from Markdown, and no one has
said a peep. What makes "Standard Markdown" different from the existing
products?

"Comment Markdown"? "Code flavored Markdown"? "Startup Flavored Markdown"?
"Startup Markdown"? "Standard Flavored Markdown"? "A Standardized
Implementation of Markdown"? "Specced Markdown"? "The Standard Dialect of
Markdown"? Are any of these acceptable?

Why do these folks, alone, need to remove the word "markdown" from their name?
And is it specifically the word "Standard", or perhaps the lack of a
"flavored"-type word, that is grinding gears?

~~~
krick
Not that I really care, and sure I don't think that discussing licenses and
stuff can be valid or meaningful whatsoever, but I understand why somebody can
think of it as a problem and why they can tell a difference between "Github
flavored Markdown" and "Standard Markdown". First off, I'm quite sure that if
you own some rights on something called "Markdown" and you wan't to abuse
somebody, who uses name of your product as part of their own product, then in
a battle of lawyers and all these nasty things you can do so, because
ultimately it's your right to do so. You invented this stuff and in the
license you chose for it it's clearly stated that you don't want somebody else
to use its name. So the reason nobody tries to sue somebody for it is that
nobody really cares. We are all normal people, not some lawyers after all. If
somebody uses name of my product without my written permission, but I don't
think it's done with bad intentions and it doesn't hurt me — why should I
care? It's like we are living in a slightly more friendly world than all these
people in corporations.

So both product names derived from "Markdown" may break some permissions, but
only one of them makes somebody care of it. So what's the difference between
them? I find it pretty understandable. Say you invented ice-cream and you have
the same careless approach to use of its name. It's "Open source product". It
becomes popular. So when some guy starts making "cherry ice-cream" you don't
think it's bad — it's not the same product that you make, but it clearly
resembles it, so people understand what they are going to consume. And you
don't mind it, such a nice guy you are. Some other guy living in Hampshire
starts selling stuff that he names "Hampshire ice-cream", which you can think
is also ok. After all it's pretty natural, to call "ice-cream" something, that
very much resembles that very stuff widely known as "ice-cream", but his ice-
cream might be somewhat different from yours so it's fine to give it
distinctive name.

But then somebody starts making one of his own, which he calls "Real Ice-
cream". It's also "Open Source" but its recipe is very detailed and everything
that doesn't comply it cannot be called "Real Ice-cream". But "real" isn't
only name of his product, it's some natural word and from now on it's implying
that every other ice-cream recipe in the world — including your own, the
original one — isn't "real".

With "Standard Markdown" it's even worse, as "standard" is pretty clear word
in the tech-world. And now when some bunch of guys try to "standartize"
something that isn't ultimately their it's only natural that somebody doesn't
like it. It's not like markdown is born yesterday, it's widely known thing and
it has nothing to do with all these ambitious guys like codinghorror. If you
wrote your own markdown compiler it was _just some markdown compiler_. You
like how it works, maybe somebody likes it too, you don't really want to
change anything. But from now on it's some _non-standard markdown_ compiler.
Must be pretty offensive for somebody.

------
MBCook
Is anyone _actually_ arguing that that no one should ever write a
specification? Everything I've seen has been about the co-opting of the name.
That seems to be Gruber's issue:

    
    
        Marco: What if they just make their own thing,
               give it their own name, and see if it catches on?
    
        [Gruber]: Exactly!
    

[https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507590561172176897](https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507590561172176897)

~~~
antidaily
Yeah and I already forgot what the new name is.

------
tehwalrus
I would love for markdown to be in more places, and work the same everywhere.
Standard Markdown is a darn good name to use for that, and while Gruber is
sometimes right, he is definitely hit and miss (and with gathering together
all the ways to add tables to Markdown, and picking one and adding it to the
"spec" on his site, he missed.)

------
mikeash
All this fuss over a name. A name that the purported owner hasn't enforced
before. A name that's been used by hundreds of other projects. A name that's
been thoroughly genericized, and is descriptive of the project.

I can see why Gruber is upset, but why does anybody else feel the need to be
upset _for_ him?

------
swilliams
From what I've gathered, the only thing Gruber is upset about is the name
"Standard" Markdown. I don't think he cares if there is some kind of body that
has some kind of standards thing. I'd bet that if the "Standard Markdown"
people called it something else and even kept the exact same syntax, he'd be
fine with it.

------
unclebunkers
I asked Gruber specifically whether he approved, and he was VERY clear, he did
not. It's therefore a dick move, period end. Voting me down doesn't change the
fact that it's a dick move. The reason the team wants to use the Markdown name
is because of the currency behind it. It's Gruber's currency.

~~~
orf
It's public currency. He hasn't touched the 'spec' in what, 10 years? We've
moved on, he needs to as well.

~~~
etchalon
Has it occurred to you he hasn't touched the spec because he believes it
doesn't NEED to be touched?

That others disagree is not an argument for his having abandoned his ownership
or rights to the name.

~~~
orf
He can believe that it doesn't need to be touched all he likes, it doesn't
change the fact that it does. The many subtly incompatible forks dealing with
Markdowns ambiguities attest to that.

Want to write some Markdown? Do you use vanilla markdown, github markdown,
stackoverflow markdown, PHP markdown, a markdown parser with extensions? What
we don't need is yet another fork but a standard. Gruber doesn't want to step
up to the plate? Fine. The community will. Gruber doesn't like the name? Deal
with it.

~~~
etchalon
It's his name and his project.

He gets to decide what the name is, what projects may use that name, and how
they may use it.

------
wrs
Is the solution as simple as changing the name to "Interoperable Markdown"?

Markdown interoperability is not now and has never been a goal of Gruber's --
indeed he seems to celebrate the lack of it. Use of the name "<adjective>
Markdown" for incompatible derivatives has been accepted for many years. So
replacing the word "Standard" with an explicit description of the difference
("Interoperable") between plain old Markdown (whatever that is, since it's not
well-defined) and this must be OK, right?

~~~
pkamb
> _Only two maybes I’ve thought of: Strict Markdown or Pedantic Markdown.
> “Strict” still doesn’t seem right._

[https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507615356295200770](https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507615356295200770)

------
mythz
IMO Gruber's request is perfectly reasonable:

> They’ve done more than “formalize”. They’ve changed the syntax. New syntax,
> new name. That’s all I ask.

\-
[https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507651498692849665](https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507651498692849665)

~~~
Yver
They floated the name "RockDown" back then. Whatever happened to that?

------
peawee
What if we called it ANSI Markdown instead?

Read the foreword to [http://flash-gordon.me.uk/ansi.c.txt](http://flash-
gordon.me.uk/ansi.c.txt) , and it sounds very similar to the Markdown issue. C
is still called C, regardless of what ANSI (and later ISO) did to it.

------
X-Istence
If Standard Markdown doesn't use a single line of code from the original
Markdown, how are the license terms being violated?

I didn't see any mention of Standard Markdown being an modification to the
original Markdown code base.

------
BerislavLopac
I don't think that's an issue of control. Quite the contrary, Gruber wants
nobody to have the control, and he doesn't want the language to be
standardized, as he believes that it will prevent it from evolving and
expanding on its own.

He didn't complain about MultiMarkdown or GitHub Flavored Markdown, because
those examples of precisely that evolution. The problem with "Standard
Markdown" is that it implies "the one true way", and gives a (theoretical at
least) power to a relatively small group to dictate what is Markdown-kosher
and what isn't.

------
jhamdotme
In his previous article
([http://spinhalf.net/typos/](http://spinhalf.net/typos/)), he rails against
typos and about how horrible they are for our comprehension. Not surprisingly,
he messes up himself:

“I immediately loose my train of thought.”

Me too, man. Me too.

~~~
bshimmin
As I finished reading his piece on Markdown (with which I agreed
wholeheartedly), my eyes glanced down through the next heading, "Typos",
through the date, and landed on "efficeint".

------
eik3_de
Guys, just rename "Standard Markdown" to _Marky_ , leave Gruber sit on his
Markdown name and move on.

MacFarlane, GitHub, meteor, reddit and Atwood/stackexchange can let the world
know that "markdown" is now legacy and the future lies in _Marky_

------
tuananh
The whole ideal of open-sourcing things is that to allow community to further
improve it.

got pissed over a name because others do a better job than you at maintaining
it is a dick.

I'm with Jeff and the gang on this.

------
jader201
_> I believe, MD has proliferated this far, not because it is an ambiguous,
open to interpretation spec but in-spite of that._

Gruber apparently directly disagrees with this:

[https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507364924340060160](https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507364924340060160)

~~~
scott_s
Yes, but the author's statement was made in direct response to Gruber's; the
author was aware of, and responding to that statement.

~~~
jader201
I was wondering that too, but I could not find this quote cited anywhere. Did
I miss it?

~~~
scott_s
When it comes to blog posts on Markdown standardization, I think that Gruber's
stance that Markdown succeeded because of its lack of specification is assumed
background information. I don't think that tweet is the first time Gruber has
expressed the sentiment.

~~~
jader201
I agree, there was never any doubt that Gruber felt this way.

I just thought it was interesting that the OP's quote was in direct
contradiction to a quote Gruber Tweeted yesterday, and thought the Tweet and
its context was worth including here, considering it wasn't cited in the blog.

------
gojomo
Let's fix this by calling it 'RSS 2.1'.

------
barraponto
Voldemark, the markup language that cannot be named.

------
otikik
Agree with everything on that post.

------
byuu
A similar situation happened to me, but obviously on a smaller scale.

I added support for using pixel shaders on emulated video game output, but
rather than have separate files for the vertex and fragment shaders, I put the
pair into an XML file, and also included settings for min/mag filter, texture
format, etc there as well; so that it was all self-contained as a single file
that you could paste on a forum.

I released this, and some other people liked the idea, but wanted it to
support multiple shader passes. Which was great! I wanted to add this, but had
a lot of much higher priority items on my plate and couldn't get to it quickly
enough.

So they went ahead and added multi-pass, texture lookup, reflection, and a
whole bunch of other neat features without consulting me, released their own
software and then called it "version 1.1", while continuing to support my spec
as "version 1.0"

The results were obvious: lots of users coming to me to ask why their XML
shaders weren't working, which turned out to be because they were using a
different standard. Shader writers began targeting 1.1 syntax even without
using any additional features, which needlessly took away compatibility with
my own program.

This wouldn't have been so bad, I could have just supported their new spec
once I had time, except that they took the spec in a direction I felt was
flawed and against the spirit of it. Referencing external texture files which
created file naming conflicts (shader A and shader B both loading their own
separate versions of texture.png), losing the ability to post them as inline
text on forums, having very inconsistent syntax to what I had been doing,
features that were vague in their combinatorial effects, etc.

I ultimately had to abandon my own (retroactively named for me) "version 1.0"
specification and start on an entirely new format to resolve that ambiguity.

They were certainly in the right and clear to do the work that I wouldn't, but
I do regret that they took my name, and ended up causing a lot of confusion
for end users. And now I worry about this happening to all of my formats (I
have a markup format, a delta-based binary diff tool, the new multi-pass
shader format, and a few others.)

I could try and come up with some licensing term that would most certainly get
all of my software kicked out of Debian's main repositories; but there's
really no way for me to stop anyone from fragmenting my specifications again,
as I simply don't have the money nor desire to trademark things and attempt to
sue people for enforcement.

So, with that said ... I'm with John Gruber on this. If he is asking them to
change the name, they should change the name. It's just the polite thing to
do. Even if Gruber is a terrible steward, he created it. Keeping Markdown in
the name is clearly just intended to capitalize on the success of the format,
which they themselves did not earn.

