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 ;)
The IT industry is full of crotchety neckbeards with chips on their shoulders who need to be tiptoed around, generally with good reason because when others participate in the work they have created, they feel devalued and lash out. An apology would never serve to satisfy because there is an inherent criticism underneath all this implying that Grubers initial work was less than perfect. That's what he's probably actually angry about, not the mecanics of the process for coming up with a less inconsistent and better defined standard.
Failing to reply to Jeff's emails is standard passive-aggressive behavior for people like this. It puts him in a position to shout about how he has been wronged.
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.
That's a bit misleading. Jeff has been known to rant about Markdown since at least 2009 [1] and decided to do something about it in 2012 [2].
John was contacted at that time. The idea was the following:
I'd really prefer not to fork the language; I'd much rather collectively help carry the banner of Markdown forward into the future, with the blessing of John Gruber and in collaboration with other popular sites that use Markdown.
That did not happen, so they went ahead on their own. Of course I have no idea what John's private reactions were and if that discussion involved naming issues, but this did not come out of the blue.
It's hard to tell, but Jeff possibly seems to be patronizing John a little in the original 2012 blog post [0] with all the bolded statements about John and the bit about the Yankees. Or he could just as well be trying to have a bit of light-hearted fun with it, I don't think we can judge his intentions in this case.
Ironically, that wasn't an "ad hominem attack", it was just a plain ol' fashioned insult, which doesn't require a fancypants-sounding Latin label. But, you dismissing Gruber as an "Apple fanboy journalist" is a bit ad-hom.
Or, it would be, if this were a formal debate. Which it isn't.
Calling him an "Apple fanboy journalist" isn't an ad hominem attack unless you use that characterization to dismiss something he said. It's just an attack, and a pretty accurate one at that, if you follow his blog.
But this is totally unrelated to the immature behavior that he's showing about this whole Markdown drama.
I wasn't calling JG that, I was calling all those around him in the Apple tech press who also piled on with the insults like "jackass".
The point is that one side is name-calling and insulting the other, while the other side is trying to advance a technology for a large number of devs and internet users.
I'm just a commenter on HN with little skin in the game, how I conduct myself matters little in this debate. How the primary parties in this story act is important and revealing.
And for all their screaming, there has been barely an acknowledgement of the change. Quick to insult, a lot slower when it comes to acknowledging compromise.
“Pandoc’s enhanced version of markdown includes syntax for footnotes, tables, flexible ordered lists, definition lists, fenced and highlighted code blocks, superscript, subscript, strikeout, title blocks, automatic tables of contents, embedded LaTeX math, citations, and markdown inside HTML block elements...”
“There is, however, one respect in which pandoc’s aims are different from the original aims of markdown. Whereas markdown was originally designed with HTML generation in mind, pandoc is designed for multiple output formats.”
“Thus, while pandoc allows the embedding of raw HTML, it discourages it, and provides other, non-HTMLish ways of representing important document elements like definition lists, tables, mathematics, and footnotes.”
Publish academic, scientific, and regular books and papers with pandoc markdown, using Latex to generate PDFs.
What is less clear to me is why the Comdard Markdown (which is what I think I'll call it from now on) folks are so desperate to choose a name that delegitimizes other versions of markdown, including the original. And now that they've chosen a second name that does the same (although not quite as blatantly), it's clearly not accidental.
Even people like me who broadly agree with almost everything they've said and tend towards their side in this debate can see it's not a classy move.
No reasonable person could have disagreed with calling it something entirely new.
Some people could have disagreed with calling it something that indicates it's a kind of markdown but doesn't try to usurp the whole ecosystem (eg. X flavoured markdown). I presume Gruber would have still been irritated that it isn't a superset, but most people would have thought it was acceptable given the situation.
Choosing any name with connotations like 'standard', 'basic', 'definitive', 'normal', 'authentic', 'original', 'true', 'certified', 'ratified' or yes, 'common' is pushing the limits of good taste.
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.
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.
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.
Do you know what is Markdown? "standard/common" means the original Markdown is not perfect for the simple use of Markdown?
What's more important? Naming or specification? Just don't know why the intelligent people like the word "Markdown" too much to give the new spec a new name. Anyone can explain such great love (and love the new spec more than John Gruber)?
Whether or not they originally had a goal of making Gruber unhappy, the tussle has increased the visibility of their project. Going from "Standard" to "Common" is not likely to end the fight, and so won't end the free extra publicity.
As semisight says[1], "Atwood's reaction complies with the word of the request, but not the spirit of it." Atwood's a smart guy. Someone who lives and breathes (and writes about) this business. It's hard for me not to think this is intentional.
I get the sense it's unintentional. This isn't how you want your launch to go. The impact on this project is large - SE, Reddit and GitHub.
It's not clear whether JA is leading the group's effort, but he's definitely the one speaking the most.
The group shouldn't have been surprised at the continued stonewalling. Perhaps they had a Plan B, perhaps we're seeing it or a hurried Plan C. In any case, I'd agree that the project is getting visibility and attention, but I definitely wouldn't have planned for this. It's too ugly.
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 ;)