
Standard Markdown Is Now Common Markdown - edavis
http://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-common-markdown/
======
Steko
Best comment I've read on the issue, from metafilter user archagon, although I
doubt most HNers will agree with it.

[http://www.metafilter.com/142475/Standard-flavored-
Markdown#...](http://www.metafilter.com/142475/Standard-flavored-
Markdown#5718950)

 _Yes, ambiguity is a feature in this case. Markdown was designed from the top
down by a writer, for writers. This gives it the rare characteristic of being
intuitive to understand and use, but not necessarily easy (or even
unambiguously possible) to implement. The lack of a standard helps keep people
honest by making them follow the spirit of the law, not the letter, as you see
happening with things like HTML and CSS. In fact, I 'd argue that's the entire
philosophy behind Markdown: usable and understandable by ordinary humans, all
the way down to the spec. (Ever try reading the C spec? It feels like you need
a PhD to get anything out of it.)

I'm with Gruber that Markdown is successful because of its ambiguous (read:
easy-to-understand) design, not in spite of it. The proof is clearly in the
pudding. My feeling is that the people running into edge cases are trying to
use Markdown as some sort of replacement for HTML, not a massively simplified
syntax for writing articles and pages.

What I see here is a group of developers who arrogantly think that they know
better than Gruber what to do with Markdown. They could have called it
anything else, but they chose to make the issue political. It's juvenile,
especially coming from people who we're supposed to look up to in the tech
community.

According to Gruber, Markdown is the hardest thing he's ever worked on. He
didn't spend a week on it, the idea was not obvious, and its success was not
accidental. If I was him, I'd absolutely be seeing red too.._

~~~
frowaway001
> Markdown is the hardest thing he's ever worked on

If that's even remotely true, I hope he never touches any piece of code in his
life again.

For god's sake, just look at his implementation: "Hacked together after a
night of binge drinking" would be the perfect description of it.

~~~
jacobolus
The hard part is figuring out what the format should look like (a labor of
love that he spent months if not years on, iteratively refining), not the
implementation (which is a hacky ball of perl).

~~~
matthiasv
That format is essentially (sans the link syntax) what plaintext email has
been looking like for decades. I don't get the whole praise for Gruber of
"inventing" something novel. It's not.

------
callum85
> 1\. Rename the project.

OK.

> 2\. Shut down the standardmarkdown.com domain, and don't redirect it.

Don't redirect it? Seriously?

> 3\. Apologize.

This guy is actually a prick.

EDIT: OK that was unfair. If I was in Gruber's position, maybe I'd be angry,
and maybe I would have demanded an apology; it doesn't make him a prick. But
the "don't redirect" thing seems petty.

~~~
coldtea
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.

~~~
eevilspock
> _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](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/license)

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

~~~
Nick-Craver
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.

~~~
ClashTheBunny
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?

------
semisight
I agree with the majority here--Atwood's reaction complies with the word of
the request, but not the spirit of it. On Twitter, Gruber says that he's
opposed to the naming because it restricts markdown [1]. Aka, valid markdown
from Gruber's markdown processor may not always compile on Common Markdown.

Honestly, this seems pretty reasonable to me. I also don't think that the
Common Markdown implementors gave Gruber a sufficient amount of time to
respond: "We haven't heard back after replying _last night_ , and I'm not sure
we ever will..." (emphasis mine). Last night? This is one of Gruber's most
famous projects, and you're giving him hours to respond?

Honestly, I think they're going about this the wrong way. This group has
people at both Stack Overflow, Reddit, and Github, three of the most prominent
users of Markdown. Why not rename their version completely? It would eliminate
the possibility of future conflict (which IMO is almost guaranteed). They
don't _need_ the name recognition--Markdown has needed this for a while, and I
think it will be adopted fairly quickly.

As for "new" names, how about:

* ReMD (pronounced "remedy"): fairly standard programming naming convention--adding "Re" as a prefix. Also easy to Google.

* Vernacular: Longer, less common word.

Good luck to Atwood and Co.. I really do hope they find a way to keep the
project going.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507651498692849665](https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507651498692849665)

~~~
JohnBooty

      Last night? This is one of Gruber's most famous 
      projects, and you're giving him hours to respond?
    

They've tried to get him on board and be an active stewart of his own project
for literally years - since 2009 or so, at least.

The entire time, he's alternated between being uncommunicative and outright
dismissive of any attempts to clarify his original Markdown syntax.

The fact that they're involving him at all is a courtesy, a well-intentioned
mistake. A mistake I definitely would have made too. (Not that I have the
1/1,000 of Jeff Atwood's coding chops or industry influence!) In hindsight,
they should have forked and never looked back at Gruber.

~~~
Isofarro
" _The fact that they 're involving him at all is a courtesy, a well-
intentioned mistake. A mistake I definitely would have made too._"

These are necessary mistakes. Better to have tried to get John Gruber on board
and failed, than to not have tried.

That way they can always point at the conversation to show that they did try,
but Gruber was not interested in collaborating. Otherwise, John Gruber always
have the "they stole Markdown from me. They didn't even ask me. I was willing
to collaborate." excuse.

It's an open source thing, try to work within the community before forking.
Forking is a last resort. This might get to the point where forking is now a
reasonable course of action.

------
bch
When I ported Markdown to mod_perl and a CMS I was working with about 9 or so
years ago, I emailed John, and he indicated " just don't use the 'Markdown'
name", so I choose "Makeup" (it makes things pretty). You're welcome to reuse
that name @codinghorror. It seems clear to me avoiding "Markdown", whether you
precede it with Vanilla, Humble, Common, Friendly, or _whatever_ is really
just a waste of time and likely to cause unnecessary tension. Makeup, man.
Makeup. The name could also be your public deferential gesture to John, so you
can all - Makeup.

~~~
louhike
Just for your information, CodingHorror is just the name of the blog. The
writer uses its real name: Jeff Atwood. It is therefore better to use it
directly.

~~~
pgl
He also uses the Twitter handle @codinghorror.

------
ars
John Gruber doesn't really look very good here.

~~~
MCRed
I think the reason he's "infuriated" is that his "contributions" to the tech
community are really quite meager- just this one thing that he appears to have
spent an afternoon on. (Oh, and that "app" where his "contribution" according
to him was "tastemaker", it was built and designed by two other people.)

Meanwhile he seems unreasonably widely respected, despite, like Marco, very
obviously being quite the jerk.

He's succeeded in building a cult of personality, and his ego can't handle
having the One Thing He Ever Created fixed.

For this reason- I think they should have come up with a wholly new name.
Using the word "markdown" gives gruber too much credit. It's not like he
invented JSON or anything.

~~~
kasey_junk
I don't know any of these folks and don't have any dog in this fight but to
belittle the creator of markdown by saying his contribution to the tech
community as meager is silly. I am completely out of the hipster tech loop and
found myself thinking just today "man I wish this editing software allowed for
markdown".

I don't know what your contributions are to the tech community but I'd be well
chuffed if any of my tech contributions had the wide reach of markdown.

~~~
WorldWideWayne
The way people talk about Microsoft around here, you'd think that they never
contributed anything to the tech community either.

------
AshleysBrain
I don't get Gruber's reaction. These guys have done a huge favour for
Markdown, resolving real-world compatibility problems with the first ever
unambiguous spec. Surely this is a good thing? If Gruber really wanted
Markdown to succeed, isn't this the right direction?

If multiple independent implementations of an idea start appearing, sooner or
later this is going to happen. And at that point what control can you claim to
have other than the name? These guys presumably have their own code, and I'm
pretty sure sites like reddit have a heavier investment in Markdown than
Gruber.

------
easyfrag
This is worse.

The complaint about Standard Markdown was that it appeared to be hijacking the
existing "brand" in order to present itself as the definitive version.

One definition of "Common" means prevalent and it seems to me that this word
was picked not to solve the above problem but to get around it by making
Gruber look like a dick for objecting again to the same problem.

Ironically, a second definition of "common" is "showing a lack of taste."

~~~
kemayo
In fairness, given the people backing this I'd imagine that it'll very quickly
be the most-common implementation of Markdown in use. I mean, reddit and stack
overflow are both involved.

~~~
smackfu
Reddit gets mentioned a lot, but I barely ever see Markdown there beyond the
very basics. Link syntax is probably the only distinctive "Markdown" thing.

~~~
kemayo
You're right -- I very much doubt that even a tiny percentage of reddit's
users know that they're using Markdown (it's mentioned as an aside in the
"formatting help" section). Plus, of course, it's only a limited subset of
Markdown allowed there.

Nonetheless, a tiny percentage of reddit users who know how to use the
formatting still likely represents a majority of the set of people who know
about Markdown formatting.

------
scythe
The somewhat common standard in trademark law (which I am uneducated about) is
"use it or lose it" (I know five words of trademark law...) -- Gruber hasn't
really used it, so he loses it.

Is it fair? I think Wittgenstein would call it fair. If "Markdown" in popular
usage doesn't refer to a Perl program by John Gruber but to a formatting
mechanism in use on reddit and github, then Markdown is a formatting mechanism
in use on StackExchange _et alii_ in the current language-game. If the
majority of Markdown users were using Markdown.pl and/or any other software or
system promulgated by John Gruber, he has a case.

What we do know is that reddit and github have called their systems -- and
various extensions, like github's syntax highlighting -- "Markdown" for years,
without so much as a peep. I think "Standardized Markdown" might be a little
more accurate, possibly easier on the creator...

...but I also suspect that some part of Gruber's annoyance relates to his not
being included at all in the initial discussions. Was it really reasonable to
work on this project for "two years" (does it take two years to write a ten-
page standard?) without sincerely reaching out to the initial author? For the
most part, the developers of $qualifier Markdown clarified syntactic
ambiguities and added a slightly less painful code-block syntax. Most of the
"heavy lifting" in this format was done by John Gruber, so I can appreciate
his annoyance even if I disagree.

~~~
plorkyeran
People have reached out to Gruber about fixing the ambiguities and making a
better spec many times, and his response has consistently been that he has no
intention of ever fixing any of the bugs in markdown.pl and that he views the
ambiguous syntax as a feature.

------
pornel
I find similarity with W3C/WHATWG striking:

• The top implementors were frustrated with an old, vague spec that doesn't
specify error handling.

• The original owner had stopped developing the spec, and the spec fails to
describe new extensions and de-facto standards that have emerged since.

• The implementors wrote a new, much more complete spec from scratch under a
name that implies taking ownership.

• And then there's a childish fight about forking.

~~~
gsnedders
The WHATWG didn't publish any spec entitled "HTML5" (or anything including
"HTML") until after the W3C (new) HTML WG was chartered and underway, with a
document based on the WHATWG one. It was, for years, entitled "Web
Applications 1.0".

~~~
oblio
And did anyone actually call it "Web Applications 1.0"?

~~~
gsnedders
No, not really. It ended up including a note saying something along the lines
of "this spec is commonly referred to as 'HTML5'"!

------
lolwutf
Have you read Gruber's tweets on the matter? He's handling this situation like
a baby.

His powers of getting people to read his one-line blog and other worthless
content continue to amaze me.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Every time someone dismisses Gruber's contributions and influence in the tech
field, it makes our field look like it's populated by dickheads.

Gruber's consistently had some of the best analysis on Apple (and some other
aspects of the tech industry). He's been writing for over 10 years, it has
made him successful, and he's been able to cultivate direct access to Apple
([http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-06/meet-
apples-...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-06/meet-apples-
favorite-blogger)) and the occasional response from Jobs himself
([http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/10/steve-jobs-responds-to-
ipho...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/10/steve-jobs-responds-to-iphone-sdk-
complaints-intermediate-layers-produce-sub-standard-apps/)).

I'm with Atwood on this one, but seeing the peanut gallery make stupid and
snarky comments about Gruber himself is starting to piss me off.

~~~
lolwutf
Well, I agree with you that he has some of the best analysis on Apple.

But the takeaway is that his quality content represents only a drop in the
ocean of his worthless one-line microthroughts and general blabbery and
whining.

------
mafro
Gruber wasn't interested in playing ball a few years back, so why not fork,
rename, improve, and forget the old v0.1 version?

If this utopian standard really is the best, then it will win market share by
that virtue.

------
brudgers
Credit to Gruber for making something clever. It's just a bit late for making
creditable claims of stewardship. This is as if JWZ were complaining that he
wasn't consulted in regard to <blink> being left out of HTML5.

Markdown isn't a regular language. The canonical documentation is written with
a tiny font on a grey background, and Atwood's interest is a response to the
computer science issues which arise when markdown is used on a site at the
scale of StackOverflow. He's been confronting its implementation issues since
at least June 2008 [1] and looking at developing a proper markdown parser
since January 2010.[2]

[1]:
[http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/06/podcast-11/](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/06/podcast-11/)

[2]:
[http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/podcast-79/](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/podcast-79/)

------
e1ven
As an outside observer, it's somewhat amusing to look at these posts with a
bit of kremlinology, and try to guess how it all played out.

It feels (to me), like the CommonMarkdown folk are somewhat frustrated with
Gruber.. While he created the initial spec for the format, he hasn't been
interested in it for years, and they feel someone needs to own/control it.

By calling the new spec Standard (or common) Markdown, they're implying that
they're the rightful team in charge of defining the format, what is/isn't
compatible, and how to verify it.

They're treating Gruber very carefully - Giving him Cameos and token
references, but not taking his views seriously. It reminds me a little of Stan
Lee in the new Marvel movies - He's a quirky old uncle, not someone who would
actually make decisions on the ground.

For example - The CommonMarkdown team say they've been working on this for 2
years, but only sent the current name to Gruber two weeks ago - When he didn't
reply, they pushed forward anyway. His original license had asked that people
don't use the name Markdown for derived works, but this seems to have been
ignored.

They also felt that he wasn't a modern or relevant user of Markdown - The team
seems focused on people who are using Markdown as a commenting format, more
than the authoring format Gruber uses it as.

My guess is that releasing publicly was a forcing function - The team didn't
have a response from Gruber, and didn't know if or when they'd get one.

The quote "I assure you that we did not choose the name to make you, or anyone
else, angry." seems particularly telling - They didn't write that "We thought
this would be OK", or "We thought you'd like this".. Just that they didn't do
it with a deliberate goal of making any specific person angry. This seems like
a low bar ;)

After they released earlier this week, my guess is that the blowback was
somewhat frustrating. They had worked for years on trying to standardize the
format, but all anyone was focusing on was the name!

Gruber asked them to shut it down, but (I'm guessing) wasn't interested in an
in-depth dialog.

Since they still want to proceed with the project, and (again guessing) still
want to be viewed as the default/standard version, they've renamed their
project to "Common Markdown".

While they don't have any particular permission for this name either, it has
many of the same connotations, but isn't the exact same name. My supposition
is that they're betting that since they've now "acquiesced", and changed the
name, Gruber will seem unreasonable if he continues to push against them.

Despite having no assurance that the new name is any less objectionable, this
lets them concede, and move to PlanB, without risking having to move to a new
name altogether.

In any event, as someone without a dog in this particular race, it's somewhat
interesting to watch, and try to guess what's really going on ;)

~~~
bhouston
Having a markdown standard is incredibly important. In John Gruber was being
an impediment to the process, then this is an intelligent way of working
around him. I respect John Gruber's commentary on his blog, but if he is
standing in the way of progress, then he has to be worked around.

~~~
Isofarro
The intelligent way around it is to recognise that John Gruber's rights and
license, and chose a path that both respects the limitations he puts in place
and allows a community to coalesce around a standardised form of a text format
derived from John Gruber's spec.

So the intelligent action is to not call it Markdown, since that requires
Gruber's written permission, which is currently a time-sensitive issue, and
may be a show stopper later as his format slips more and more out of his
control.

Pick a new name, document that it's derived from Markdown (and respects John
Gruber's wishes), and create a community around the better specified and test-
case based approach to standardisation.

Product prefer using derivative libraries, rather than Gruber's own Markdown
implementation. (With or without Gruber's written permission). Pandoc, for
example, is a common library for Markdown support, I guess GitHub, Reddit,
stack overflow are using their own custom implementations, or implementations
that started or during their lifetime became custom implementations.

~~~
_broody
Does Gruber's license hold any weight here?

They're not using his perl code. They aren't bound by any license on it. There
was never even a markdown spec to license, just a blog post (and Gruber knows
he can't claim any binding license over this spec, because he's not
complaining about that, but just the name).

Gruber had an implicit trademark on the name Markdown, but holding a trademark
requires that a) you actively exploit it and b) protect it. As for a), he
completely abandoned Markdown in 2007, never going anywhere with it after a
few years of bad stewardship. And regarding b), since he allowed other
implementations of the spec to pop up and use the name 'Markdown' liberally
before this one, it has become a common item and no one really has any claim
over it.

For all the chest beating, Gruber has no business telling anyone what they can
do with Markdown anymore, unless they're directly using Markdown.pl or taking
code from it. Which no one is going to do ever again, specially not after this
project sails away.

------
john2x
I think their biggest mistake was assuming Gruber would react
professionally/maturely.

------
spicyj
Out of the possible names listed in that post, only "Community Markdown"
sounds to me like a truly unofficial name; the others all seem to claim some
degree of authority over the entire Markdown brand.

~~~
dj-wonk
Community Markdown would imply some kind of community governance, which does
not seem to be the case. Common Markdown seems to be the creation of self-
selected, let's-do-something kind of people. I'm fine with that. So, "Mutiny
Markdown" might be better.

~~~
Kalium
Mutiny implies that they took it over from someone who was owed some kind of
loyalty. "Salvaged Markdown", maybe.

~~~
dj-wonk
Haha. To run with that, how about "Selvage Markdown":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selvage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selvage)

> The selvages keep the fabric from unraveling or fraying.

~~~
Kalium
It's perfect!

------
NotOscarWilde
I may be mistaken, but isn't the problem with the title containing the word
"Markdown" and therefore implying "Better Markdown"? And not with the specific
adjective before Markdown?

~~~
dragonwriter
Given that Gruber gave "Strict Markdown" and "Pedantic Markdown" as examples
of names that he would "probably" be okay with, apparently not.

~~~
NotOscarWilde
Are you sure that was meant in earnest? After all, the license [1] is clear:

 _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._

Plus, if somebody names "specific prior written permission", saying "we
haven't heard back since last night so it is okay" seems dishonest to me.

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

~~~
chewxy
Explain to me then why Gruber was okay with Github-flavoured Markdown?

~~~
ulisesrmzroche
Dunno but it doesn't even matter. You can enforce your copyright whenever you
want, that's the rules of the USA. You don't have to enforce it all the time
if you don't want to.

~~~
dragonwriter
Names aren't protected by copyright, and its far from clear that a spec of
this type is a non-fair-use derivative work such that it would require a
license from the copyright holder of markdown.pl in the first place.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The license only applies to derivatives of the markdown.pl code. The spec
describes a "reverse engineered" implementation that is partially
interoperable with the original but isn't actually derived from it. Reverse
engineering for the purpose of interoperability is a legal activity in the US.

------
jleader
Many people seem to be missing something that feels important to me: the
"let's spec Markdown" folks sent an email to Gruber saying "we want to call
our project 'Standard Flavored Markdown'". This name was arguably analogous to
"GitHub Flavored Markdown", which Gruber apparently had previously indicated
he was OK with. When Gruber hadn't replied after 2 weeks, the spec folks
assumed that meant he was OK with their proposed name, and went ahead and
announced ... "Standard Markdown" (without the softening "Flavored"). With no
advanced notice whatsoever to Gruber. I'd be pretty pissed too at being blind-
sided like that.

Think about the difference between "Standard Flavored Markedown" (which
implies there are other flavors out there, this one is just attempting to be
more standardized than others) and "Standard Markdown", which implies this is
The one-and-only standard version of Markdown.

------
bobbles
* We didn't get a response so we assume its OK

Seems like a pretty big assumption to me. Good change though

~~~
dragonwriter
> * We didn't get a response so we assume its OK

No such assumption is stated. They decided to honor Gruber's specific requests
(stop using the Standard Markup name, kill the domain and don't redirect it,
and apology) and, as a courtesy offered him the opportunity to provide
feedback on a list of alternative names to use instead of the Standard Markup
name.

They never suggested that they took Gruber's silence as equivalent to consent,
more that the silence (combined with the general shape of the names he had
indicated would probably be acceptable) -- given that they aren't going to
cancel the project, and they _are_ going to immediately honor his request to
stop using the _old_ name -- leaves them no choice but to choose the new name
without further input from Gruber.

~~~
jkrems
The license requires explicit written permission by Gruber before using
"Markdown". It's not fuzzy at all about this point. He didn't okay any name
like X, he said he _might_ approve of a name similar to X. That's not
permission of anything yet.

~~~
cygx
Copyright law doesn't apply, and Gruber has probably lost any trademark rights
when he failed to shut down the various Markdown flavours.

I'm not a lawyer and also not especially familiar with the laws in the US, but
my guess would be that legally, he might not have a case.

Of course there are also questions of morality, but who cares about that ;)

------
samsnelling
Without getting a response, it still is in violation of the license, correct?
[http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/license](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/license)

I bet Gruber still won't be happy, but I consider this issue squashed.

~~~
cygx
_it still is in violation of the license, correct_

That's arguable. More elaborate software licenses define terms like
'derivative work', but BSD-style licenses generally don't.

Do open specifications count as 'products derived from this software'? There's
obviously no code being shared.

Legally, it's probably more of a trademark issue, and trademarks can be lost,
in particular if they are not enforced and lose their distinctiveness.

~~~
Nick-Craver
Is Markdown actually trademarked? It's beed used in similar fashion for years
and I've never seen a trademark referred to anywhere.

~~~
cygx
I don't know the legal situation in the US, but you generally do not need to
register a trademark. It certainly helps if you do so, but I believe it's
actually not a requirement in many jurisdictions.

------
gojomo
I'd have gone with something more whimsical, like perhaps:

" _Maarkdown_ : the extra 'a' is for 'actively maintained'."

" _Marrkdown_ : the extra 'r' is for 're-specified'."

" _Mnarkdown_ : the silent 'n' is a mnemonic for 'non-ambiguous'."

------
JBiserkov
\- We worked for 2 years

\- then we wrote him and waited for 2... weeks!

\- we got no response so we went ahead... and he was mad

\- we wrote back... and waited A. Whole. Day.

\- we got no response, so we are going ahead...

\- what could possibly go wrong?!

~~~
grayclhn
IIRC, there were attempts at communication before the 2 years of work.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
I don't think there was _much._ There were a couple grumpy tweets exchanged
and blog posts written. But from reading Atwood's _own_ posts on the subject,
the timeline appears to run: complain Markdown needs a standard; learn Gruber
isn't enthusiastic about that; work on a standard in secret for two years
anyway; at the end of the two years let him know that you plan to release it
(and I'm really curious what was said here, because if he'd said no after
they'd put in _two years,_ what was the plan, exactly?); take his failure to
respond to your (apparently single) email in two weeks as implicit permission;
go ahead and do it anyway; propose a new slightly-changed name when a
shitstorm erupts; take Gruber's failure to respond to email about the name
change _in a single day_ as implicit approval.

I'm down with the idea of developers getting together and forming a common
standard for Markdown implementations if they want to do so, but Atwood &
Company have consciously and deliberately thumbed their nose at Gruber through
this whole process. They could have just called it "Plain Text Markup" and
explained in the first paragraph that yes, it's Markdown with all the
ambiguities taken out. Hell, they could have called it "PTM: The Standardized
Markdown Specification." They could have even called it "Pandoc-Flavored
Markdown," which AFAICT is (mostly) what it is. But "Standard Markdown" came
across as _we are taking control of Markdown over your objections_ and the way
they developed and announced it greatly amplifies that reading. I'm not
convinced "Common Markdown" is much of an improvement, and the "Well, we're
pretty sure _this_ will make John happy even though we didn't actually wait
for his response" definitely doesn't help.

~~~
Kalium
> (and I'm really curious what was said here, because if he'd said no after
> they'd put in two years, what was the plan, exactly?)

I would guess the answer to be "Release it anyway", because Gruber's blessing
is not something that was considered a requirement.

------
Keyframe
I can't tell if it's intentional or not, but it seems to me this drama is
artificial in its nature. A PR move, a good PR move. People now know about
'dialect formerly known as standard markdown' due to drama involved (mostly)
and have taken note of it. Just by taking a glance you can tell it's a better
option to use if you use md in any capacity. They could've called it
blarblargh or whatever and it would still have a good reach and growth, but
not an initial exposition as it has with drama. Good move, a bit manipulative,
but good move.

~~~
coldtea
Thanks, mr. conspiracy theory, but no, this is perfectly normal.

The people behind the new Markdown standard (Jeff, GitHub etc) have access to
millions of developers and users and can advertise this to high heaven without
any Gruber-drama needed. If anything, the drama could be an impediment to
adoption (e.g concerning legal status etc).

Definetely not a PR move at all.

------
kristiandupont
What a show!

I have to say that this sounds a little bit like a non-apology ("I'm sorry the
name is so infuriating") and I do think John Gruber is right that the name
chosen was a bit rude.

However, Gruber's response or lack thereof comes off as really arrogant to me.
I wonder if there is some personal history that we are not aware of? The "you
say jump, I say how high?" tweet struck me as an overly aggressive response to
what seemed to me a reasonable request back in the day.

------
smoyer
If Markdown is a brittle markup language, then an effort to correct the
inconsistencies and contradictions should logically be called Markright.

------
ddingus
I would call the thing CommonMark and leave the "down" out of it.

Given the improvements, it's worth a little initial ambiguity, and given those
are solid, that ambiguity won't endure very long.

Everybody has high happy potential, and it's up to them individually to
actualize it.

------
ChikkaChiChi
How about naming this new spec Content Markup Language (CML) and say it was
"inspired by Markdown"

The group has heavy backing, they could whip up parsers fairly quickly, and
Markdown can be left in the dust where it's "creator" seems to want to leave
it.

------
paulannesley
Markdown is Gruber's thing.

Github Flavored Markdown means “Gruber's thing, but with some GitHub things
added”; and that's what it is.

Standard Markdown means “the main/real/most-widely-used Markdown”; but it's
none of those things.

Common Markdown means almost exactly the same thing. If Standard Markdown is
not okay, neither is Common Markdown.

Gruber suggested “Strict Markdown” or “Pedantic Markdown”. These names clearly
describe how the project differs from Gruber's thing.

This has very little to do with whether the name contains the word “Markdown”.
It's about semantics; describing what this thing is. Also, prematurely calling
something Standard or Common is a classic mistake.

------
dmcdorman
Haven't we seen this movie about the clash of egos and a non-standard
"standard" before? It didn't end well and no one seems to have benefitted from
the exerience.

A rose by any other name would certainly not be a rose to the casual reader.
"Smakdown" (for example) would require a Google search to inform that reader.
We'd loose 1 minute to see that "it's a new standard [ forked from | based on
] "Markdown by John Gruber".

Calling it a rose would mean reams of existing code that would generate errors
on this new "Rose" input.

Names matter when they break something. But only until we learn the new one
and write new code.

------
vatotemking
John Gruber on Markdown and "standardization":
[https://overcast.fm/podcasts/episode/344902019595#t=4527](https://overcast.fm/podcasts/episode/344902019595#t=4527)

------
zimbatm
Taking a pause from all the drama.

AsciiDoc is really close to Markdown, is well specified and has a lot of
features that are missing from MD like tables and footnotes.

If you want to migrate, rename the .md files to .adoc and fix the links
syntax. Github supports that format out of the box and
[http://asciidoctor.org/](http://asciidoctor.org/) also has browser extensions
to do live rendering of your local files.

------
phpnode
if markdown.pl had been written by some less famous person there'd have been
none of this walking on eggshells, this whole thing is ridiculous.

------
batbomb
Let's see if I got this right:

GML -> SGML -> HTML -> XML

Gruber takes the word markup, takes a (slight) new spin on the name markup and
and calls it the opposite of markup (markdown). He now owns. Gruber gets mad
when someone wants to extend markdown to be a generalized/common/standard
version of itself, as has happened many times in history, because the name
isn't differentiated itself enough.

How about just changing it to:

pukram

markram

unmarkup

markforward

markback

markright

rightmark

markit

nwodkram

grandmarky

markymark

(Note: I think Common/Standard Markdown is just fine)

------
daigoba66
Why has Gruber never registered, claimed or enforced a trademark before? I
suppose this is the mess that can happen when you don't register or at least
publically claim your marks.

[http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/register.jsp](http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/register.jsp)

~~~
e12e
Right, so in order to register a trademark that is valid for the whole web,
you'd need to file an international trademark following "the Madrid" protocol
(eg:[1]). I quote: "Processing time in each country may vary, but is not
normally longer than 18 months. The reason for this is that the regulations
regarding the Madrid Protocol stipulate that national authorities have only 18
months in which to refuse registration."

Sounds like a lot of bureaucracy just to avoid having others dilute a simple
technology concept like "a certain flavour of plain-text markup".

[1] [https://www.patentstyret.no/en/Trademarks/International-
trad...](https://www.patentstyret.no/en/Trademarks/International-
trademarks/International-registration/)

------
smilekzs
I suppose the name is the least issue now -- as long as the big sites starts
adopting it (hey it's still 99.9% markdown anyway), no single person could
easily stop the standard itself from proliferating. Instead I'd like to see
more progress on formalizing this and further eliminating corner cases.

------
josephwegner
I've thought for a long while that Jeff Atwood was a bit egotistical - I've
mostly kept it to myself, but this really takes the cake.

There's a few key things you need to have to properly apologize[1]:

\- a detailed account of the situation

\- acknowledgement of the hurt or damage done

\- taking responsibility for the situation

\- recognition of your role in the event

\- a statement of regret

\- asking for forgiveness

\- a promise that it won't happen again

\- a form of restitution whenever possible

Most of those things aren't there. And, most notably, Jeff spent the majority
of this post explaining why he _wasn 't_ at fault. That may be a fair opinion,
but keep your ego to yourself - don't post an apology if you don't mean it,
and don't act like this fulfills Gruber's request just because you put it on
the internet.

Furthermore, _Gruber is right_. He has a license on the name Markdown[2] - the
name is not up for grabs. And the name "Standard Markdown" very directly
implies that the rest of the "flavors" of Markdown are wrong. I would say
"Common Markdown" is no better - it implies that all other flavors of Markdown
are uncommon. If Jeff really had any intention of making things right, the
_least_ he could have done was wait more than a day to hear back from Gruber -
it's not like this is really a time-sensitive matter.

[1] [http://www.perfectapology.com/how-to-say-im-
sorry.html](http://www.perfectapology.com/how-to-say-im-sorry.html)

[2]
[http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/license](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/license)

~~~
voyou
"He has a license on the name Markdown"

No, he doesn't. He has copyright on something, and he provides licenses to
that copyright material on certain conditions, which include the use of the
name "Markdown". But if you're not using his copyright, you don't have to get
permission from him, so what he thinks about your use of the term "Markdown"
isn't legally relevant.

~~~
mindcrime
_so what he thinks about your use of the term "Markdown" isn't legally
relevant._

Not necessarily. He would have had a trademark on Markdown at some point (you
don't even need to register a trademark to have one, IIRC, trademarks are
established simply by use). So unless he's _lost_ that trademark due to non-
enforcement (which is a possibility) then what he thinks would matter if he
felt the urge to litigate it.

But legalities aside, from a _moral_ perspective, I believe that people have
an obligation to consider the wishes of the person who created and named
Markdown originally.

~~~
dragonwriter
> He would have had a trademark on Markdown at some point (you don't even need
> to register a trademark to have one, IIRC, trademarks are established simply
> by use).

They are established by bona fide use as a trademark (a mark of origin of a
specific product) in the ordinary course of commerce. Its not clear to me that
Markdown was ever a trademark, and that if it was it hasn't been either
abandoned (not using a mark in commerce can lose it) or lost through the term
being allowed to become generic.

------
tim333
And now it seems: Common Markdown Is Now CommonMark

([http://standardmarkdown.com/](http://standardmarkdown.com/))

At least that's obviously a different thing to Gruber's Markdown in a way that
the other names were not.

------
logn
_We haven 't heard back after replying last night [...] we're immediately
renaming the project [...] The project name change is already in progress_

Sounds like those are fighting words.

------
eli
Seems like they care what Gruber says about their project, so I think they
should have tried a lot harder to get feedback from him. But maybe that's just
the journalist in me.

------
LeicaLatte
A dying mobile web desperately seeking attention. Going after small guys. Try
doing this to Kanye!

It is during times like this that creators, makers are driven to defenses like
patents.

------
dj-wonk
In the light of recent events, I have some name idea suggestions:

    
    
      * Showdown Markdown
      * Mutiny Markdown
      * Post Markdown

~~~
grayclhn
"Template Markdown" for the pandoc roots

------
NaNaN
I suggest "Warkdown" or "Warkup". :p Then the dictionary app may ask if you
are finding Markdown/markup.

------
slm_HN
> 1\. Rename the project.

Sure, how about BTM? Does that stand for Better Than Markdown? No, not at all,
it's just three random letters.

I'm a little amazed Gruber is so protective of "Markdown". It's a mess and
it's been a mess for years. It's like meeting a guy who brags about designing
the Ford Pinto gas tank, or being the comptroller at Enron.

~~~
kasey_junk
Except all manner of systems are built on top of it. Does he come off as a
jerk in this argument? Yes, but we shouldn't belittle his previous
accomplishments because of that.

------
ImpressiveWebs
I think John Gruber should change his name to Lars Ulrich.

Embrace progress, don't condemn it.

------
th0ma5
I thought this all derived from BBCode?

------
personZ
Why not just do something completely original and get away from this mess?

And by original, I include the concept of using traditional ASCII markups. For
instance, doing _this_ (asterisks) for emphasis long preceded Markdown. As did
_this_. As did -this- and various other ASCII markings. None of those are
innovations of markdown, or are they inventions of John Gruber, and their
intention is directly paralleled in HTML.

Beyond that...the link mechanism of Markdown is and always has been pretty
weak, and outside of that it's pretty marginal grounds.

~~~
scrollaway
Do you really think it is appropriate, or polite, to ask "Why not just do
something completely different to what you've been working on for over two
years"?

~~~
personZ
Yes, I do think it's appropriate. Further, this discussion is among the
participants of HN -- it isn't for the edification or entertainment of any
subjects.

There's a name and namespace collision that is causing enormous ill will.
Further, as much as it's a "standard" it's a half-baked standard on most
sites, many simply utilizing what people already traditionally did for ASCII
decoration.

------
smacktoward
They should have gone the Apple route and renamed it "BHA" ;-)

(See [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/butt-head-
astronomer.ht...](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/butt-head-
astronomer.html) if you don't get the reference)

~~~
MCRed
Gruber isn't an astronomer. Or did you mean "alcoholic"?

BHB doesn't have quite the right ring to it, and he's not much of a blogger
either.

He's the Paris Hilton of the tech world. Well, that's not fair to Paris Hilton
whose much more of an entrepreneur. But what would you have called her
profession when she was merely famous for being famous?

