[LordDragonfang]

> if I would take your copyrighted work

https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

>Markdown is free software, available under a BSD-style open source license.

John Gruber's markdown is unmaintained (last updated in 2004), free software, which many people have contributed to to fix oversights and extend its capabilities. This is exactly how fsf is supposed to work.

[Y-bar]

You are unfortunately making the same incorrect conclusion many of us did back then.

It was about the _Name_ , never about the syntax/implementation.

Gruber was very clear with his license and regular words that he did not allow the usage of the name in a manner which would cause people to be confused or suggest that it was an official implementation.

[LordDragonfang]

Huh. Good point, I did miss that. That, however, seems to primarily be an issue of trademark, not copyright. And once we enter the domain of trademark [law], genericization becomes a salient point, especially with the "anyone can use it however they want" reality of FSF.