Popularity has no relationship with being generic. The classic case, Kleenex, has the entire first page of Google hits referring to the product of the same name, but it's still a generic mark now. Even if popularity did matter, Google isn't necessarily the best way of measuring that, and if forced to guess, I'd say the percentage of markdown files processed by Gruber's perl implementation is very small.

Also, if the problem with "Standard Markdown" is the use of the term "Markdown", then the license is relevant. But that means that everyone else (Multi-markdown, Markdown Extra, Github-flavored Markdown, Python-flavored Markdown, Markdown Python, Markdown PHP, etc. are all equally guilty of a "dick move". I don't see anyone arguing that calling it "XXX Markdown" is a problem. It's calling it Standard Markdown that they have a problem with, and the license doesn't really address that without also addressing everything else.

I do get the reaction to some degree. I would stop short of calling it a "dick move", but maybe it's a bit tone-deaf admittedly. I just think that the horse has left the barn on taking offense that someone implemented something sort of like what you called "Markdown" and called their version some form of "Markdown".

> Also, if the problem with "Standard Markdown" is the use of the term "Markdown", then the license is relevant. But that means that everyone else (Multi-markdown, Markdown Extra, Github-flavored Markdown, Python-flavored Markdown, Markdown Python, Markdown PHP, etc. are all equally guilty of a "dick move".

Gruber is OK with "Github flavored Markdown" because the name makes it sound like a fork. "Standard Markdown" does not sound like a fork. See my earlier comment in this thread for a cite to Gruber verifying that this is his problem with the name.

Maybe we're just too immersed in our own terminology, but to me, "Standard X" (e.g., Standard ML) refers not necessarily to the notion that "our version owns the concept of X" but that "our version of X is standarized". Common Lisp took a slightly different term, but that really reflected their goal with building the language spec -- they weren't after any old standard, they specifically wanted to incorporate common features from the bunches of different Lisp implementations. Calling this "Common Markdown" doesn't quite capture the right meaning, I think.

The thing that makes this weird in that context is that I can't think offhand of any examples where the inventor of "X" has been opposed to the idea of doing anything about the mass of incompatible versions floating around. Usually, you have a language, there are a few implementations, and then everyone gets together to nail down what an "official" version should do. My gut is that at some point, if after a decade of pleading, the maintainer of an "official" version is not stepping up, the community is OK to go on without them, but clearly there are arguments on both sides there.