But if you read [the apology][1] I previously linked, you'll see that Jeff Atwood (not Joel Spolsky btw; he is not involved in CommonMark in any way AFAIK) stat

But if you read [the apology][1] I previously linked, you'll see that Jeff Atwood (not Joel Spolsky btw; he is not involved in CommonMark in any way AFAIK) stated that the attitude you're inferring from the name "Standard Markdown" ("WE own it, WE control it, WE'RE in charge.") was never the intent: > We were simply trying to pick a name that correctly and accurately reflected our goal – to build an unambiguous flavor of Markdown. If the name we chose made inappropriate overtures about Standard Markdown being anything more than a highly specified flavor of Markdown, I apologize. Standard does have certain particular computer science meanings, as in IETF Standard, ECMA Standard. That was not our intent, it was more of an aspirational element of "what if, together, we could eventually..". You're of course free to dismiss that explanation as insincere, but I think you may be reading some malicious intent into this that simply wasn't there. [1]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-common-markdown/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-commo...