Exactly, I don't understand people making the argument that a project is abandonned because it doesn't evolve, I think that Gruber thinks it's a feature. I also understand why another group of people would want to make evolve and extend this work I think it's fair. But what I don't get is this offensive naming Standard Markdown it is somewhat made to make look Markdown deprecated, old, instead of simply communicating on the idea that it is a different project originally based on Markdown but oriented in a different direction. Worst of all I think this naming was choosen on purpose.
> that a project is abandonned because it doesn't evolve
While I wouldn't say that a project is abandoned, I would say that a project is broken if it's a file format that has many ambiguities in the spec, and bug reports to the author/maintainer are all marked as WONTFIX. I really wouldn't describe that situation as "doesn't evolve" either.
Yes, but for instance sometimes in my open source projects I disagree with the philosophy or with the purpose of a patch and I mark it WONTFIX, I feel bad because I don't want to offense people that take the time to contribute, but above all I don't want to mess-up with my project so I don't commit the patch. At the end of the day I think you're the creator of the project, you have a vision, you are the editor and you must not feel bad about it. And after all, if people disagree, they fork it and make it their own project with their own name. But calling it abandonned or bad stewardship is simply wrong.
When you make something, and publish it with the intent that it is used by others, then you can't turn around and decide that any/all criticism is unfair.
Take the Linux kernel for example. If Linus Torvalds decides to abandon all support for architectures other than MIPS in the Linux kernel, would you not consider it fair game to criticize his stewardship of the Linux kernel? Or is all criticism silenced by, "well, it's my project so I can do whatever I want to do?"
This is also a little more ambiguous because Markdown is a loose file format spec rather than a project with "actual" code, so no one is really "submitting patches."
> When you make something, and publish it with the intent that it is used by others, then you can't turn around and decide that any/all criticism is unfair.
He doesn't say that, I don't say that, he says that it doesn't fit with his vision.
> Take the Linux kernel for example. If Linus Torvalds decides to abandon all support for architectures other than MIPS in the Linux kernel, would you not consider it fair game to criticize his stewardship of the Linux kernel? Or is all criticism silenced by, "well, it's my project so I can do whatever I want to do?"
Non sequitur. He didn't remove nothing, he created a syntax, he said that he is more attached to it than to its eventual ambiguities and therefore consider his job done. That's not bad stewardship it's simply having an opinion, a vision. And I repeat if people disagree they fork and use their own name as long it doesn't bother Gruber. And to keep your example of Linus Torvalds, you can check, he owns the name Linux because it originally was his project so he might enforce his rights as he sees fit.
> And to keep your example of Linus Torvalds, you can check, he owns the name Linux because it originally was his project.
There are many long-standing forks of the Linux kernel that don't change all of the source code to remove the name "Linux". I don't see Linus pitching a fit over them.
> And I repeat if people disagree they fork and use their own name.
People have forked it (e.g. MultiMarkdown, Github flavored Markdown), and Gruber hasn't complained about them (at least not publicly).
