[philipwhiuk]

Joel tried to write an IETF Standard by the backdoor for a thing he didn't invent.

Having been kicked off the word standard, they immediately thought "how can we still do this while technically obeying it". So they picked the closest possible word to Standard, implying it really was the definitive version.

Yeah, I'd be grumpy too.

If he'd called it 'Atwood Flavoured Markdown' there wouldn't be an issue. But Joel wanted to own the definition of Markdown.

As a group of tech CEOs they decided to co-opt someone's idea without even asking if it was okay.

In fact kicking John off the project was the point.

You can do that, you just can't keep the name they created.