“As several have said, the problem is mostly that conflicting implementations dilute the viability of the brand. If you advertise to users that they can use Markdown in some text area, they *might* come with some predetermined notions of what that means. If they come from Site A that had one style of Markdown and where they participated heavily to Site B that has another, they’re going to be frustrated when their carefully crafted text ends up completely borked.”

As far as I can tell, the potential of dilution of brand viability hasn’t stopped open source forks in the past. Typically there’s more active forks in any given open source project than at the local buffet on “seniors eat free” day.

Is it a valid concern? Yes. Has it stopped a ton of other forked projects in the past? No. I therefore have a hard time believing it’s the reason for avoiding just forking it and moving on.

Yes. Because *source code* and *children* are *exactly the same*. Oh, wait, no they aren’t, that’s an inane comparison. And now it’s GOOGLE JUICE? Gruber might yell at you and GOOGLE JUICE?

Oh come on, just admit that you never were going to do any of the work on Markdown, and are just sitting there whining at Gruber to do something you’re not going to do yourself, because while your time has infinite value, his time, not being your time, has zero value.

It’d be more honest than the litany of silly excuses. I have a child, and he comes up with better bad excuses than those. Takes him two hours, tops.

[1]: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/10/23/github-flavored-markdown

No one can tell John Gruber what to do (not even if his wife, if you follow them on Twitter).

Someone needs to man- or woman-up and just take a goddamn step in making a fork that does what people want.

Anyone who doesn’t take that step and continues to whine about the inability to set Gruber’s agenda should switch from Markdown to something else.

Come on, man, you run one of the best developer sites in the history of the world. You know how this works. Search engine results aren’t immutable. They’re a meritocracy. If Markdown were truly desperate for new life, wherever that life took hold, the links would point accordingly.

It must be truly awesome to have the power Gruber does. By doing nothing, he roadblocks every programmer on the planet, forcing them to wait for his approval. That’s pretty cool…to have that kind of power.”

I laughed so hard at this.

I think an important lesson from all of this, regardless of where you come down on the main subject, is that Gruber somehow scares the shit out of people. I mean, there he is, with his two-tone blog, writing with casual authority on whatever comes into his head to bitch about or admire, sometimes venturing out into the greater world to bitch some more. Perhaps he can’t roadblock every programmer on the planet, but he seems to have anyone interested in taking Markdown in new directions entirely in his thrall.

Clearly his force of personality, whether or not you buy the full extent of the no forking excuses, has had some effect on the direction of Markdown. There’s no replicating Gruber, and I can’t begin to guess at his motivations, but if you want see a possible case study in the auteur theory of open source software leadership, there he is.

So I can come over to your house and tell you how to raise your child, because you’ve clearly abandoned it? You’re totally cool with that?

Let me see, what’s the #1 Google link for Markdown.. the one I have no control over updating. The same one it’d take Gruber all of two hours (and, again, that’s being generous) to update.

It must be truly awesome to have the power Gruber does. By doing nothing, he roadblocks every programmer on the planet, forcing them to wait for his approval. That’s pretty cool…to have that kind of power.