[mikl]

Renaming it would defeat the purpose of standardisation. Instead of unifying the language, it would create confusion among users who know what Markdown is but do not know “CommonMark” or vice versa.

And no, I do not think it fair or reasonable that whoever first coined a term gets to control its meaning forever. Especially when he just reused an existing dictionary word.

Basically, Gruber is asserting that because he came up with the concept, he gets to decide that no one can fix its flaws and clear up its ambiguities, and because the problems that stance causes to thousands of people do not affect him, we can all just kiss his self-righteous posterior.

[m-p-3]

Then let's stop referencing it as Markdown and let's all use the CommonMark name.

[mikl]

Ah yeah, try to educate millions of end-users about the new name, change the file extensions on 15 years worth of files, update reams of documentation, libraries and applications.

Does that sound even remotely feasible? I think not.

For better or worse, we’re stuck with the name, because trying to change it and failing would just create more compatibility problems and confusion.

Much like the eternal GIF pronunciation controversy or tabs vs. spaces, we’ll all just have to grin and bear it, because Gruber is not likely to change his mind.