What, did Gruber invent the practice of putting asterisks around text? The article made it clear he did not. Did Gruber invent the name "Markdown" from whole cl

What, did Gruber invent the practice of putting asterisks around text? The article made it clear he did not. Did Gruber invent the name "Markdown" from whole cloth? No, it is a pun based on the word "markup". Did the Standard Markdown consortium make changes that broke compatibility with Gruber's users? No, because nobody was using Gruber's perl parser. Were they competing with the standard Gruber wrote? No, because he never wrote a standard. The article spends a great deal of time explaining how markdown codified existing conventions. It describes, not invents. Gruber didn't create markdown, because it already existed. Should he then hold the privilege to control it in perpetuity?