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I don't know. It seems like "Standard Markdown" was created out of love for Markdown (2 years of work..) and wanting to create a solid, standardized foundation

I don't know. It seems like "Standard Markdown" was created out of love for Markdown (2 years of work..) and wanting to create a solid, standardized foundation for it for the future. No matter what they called it, I bet it would have been called out as an ownership grab because the core of what they're doing: formalizing Markdown, something not created by them and something that the creator clearly doesn't want formalized. But it's pretty clear that there's a need for it at this point.. the amount of work and coordination that went into it almost proves the point. The fact that it's used everywhere certainly does. It can be pretty hard to do the right thing in a lot of cases without ruffling some feathers. That's how I see this whole situation.

kemayo 12y ago
I quite agree that they're doing something useful. I think they have good motivations, and it makes a lot of sense for the big Markdown-using sites to standardize on a particular Markdown dialect. I do disagree that there'd have been a kerfuffle over this if they'd picked a completely new name, though. I'm sure there'd have been some people who said "Markdown was just fine for me" and grumbled, but the widespread debate that Standard Markdown caused? Unlikely. Given that the people involved have enough clout to cause widespread use of this format regardless of the name, picking a name they knew would be contentious based on their previous communication with Gruber seems like an unfortunate distraction from something new and useful.