[JohnBooty]

  Last night? This is one of Gruber's most famous 
  projects, and you're giving him hours to respond?

They've tried to get him on board and be an active stewart of his own project for literally years - since 2009 or so, at least.

The entire time, he's alternated between being uncommunicative and outright dismissive of any attempts to clarify his original Markdown syntax.

The fact that they're involving him at all is a courtesy, a well-intentioned mistake. A mistake I definitely would have made too. (Not that I have the 1/1,000 of Jeff Atwood's coding chops or industry influence!) In hindsight, they should have forked and never looked back at Gruber.

[Isofarro]

"The fact that they're involving him at all is a courtesy, a well-intentioned mistake. A mistake I definitely would have made too."

These are necessary mistakes. Better to have tried to get John Gruber on board and failed, than to not have tried.

That way they can always point at the conversation to show that they did try, but Gruber was not interested in collaborating. Otherwise, John Gruber always have the "they stole Markdown from me. They didn't even ask me. I was willing to collaborate." excuse.

It's an open source thing, try to work within the community before forking. Forking is a last resort. This might get to the point where forking is now a reasonable course of action.

[semisight]

It was certainly their decision to do a clean fork or not, and I'm not judging them for wanting to take ownership of a neglected project. I was just commenting on the fact that Atwood had sent an email and expected a response in 24 hours or so. A week or two would perhaps have been sufficient.