On the future of Markdown

Written by
Date: 2012-11-19 20:37:52 00:00


On October 25th Jeff Atwood wrote The future of Markdown.

He was calling to major sites like:

  • Github
  • Stack Exchange
  • Reddit
  • others

To join together and start a standard for Markdown. In that way he propose to stop the spread of different flavors that appeared in the last times. As he points out, GitHub and StackOverflow have them both their own flavors of Markdown, which is obviously not the best thing.

The problem with Markdown, might be that John Gruber, the creator of Markdown made it for him, and released it to the public, as DSD-licenced work. So, he owns the name which Jeff wants to use.

Later Gabe Weatherhead posted this on the Markdown topic.

He asks there why not have Fletcher Penny (Creator of MultiMarkdown) involved in the creation of a standard. MultiMarkdown is an improved Markdown, with new features.

It has been some discussions over some days between Atwood and Gruber, and thanks to Alex Kessinger You can know what was going on, with the discussion between Atwood and Gruber.

I really love Markdown, and I think John Gruber is somehow a "genius" by creating it, and releasing it to the public.

But Gruber's attitude does not speak so well about him. Well a person is who he is, and in order to judge John, one should talk to him and understand his reasons.

I really hope that Jeff, Fletcher and any other who would like to jump in may go further with that project. It does not matter if finally it is called Markdown, or any other thing.

Of course Gruber does not have the obligation to participate if he does not want to. I just would have liked to see a little more humility from him. Anyway, he created it released it as Open Source, he made already a lot. Let's now continue from there.