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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

Given that Gruber gave "Strict Markdown" and "Pedantic Markdown" as examples of names that he would "probably" be okay with, apparently not.

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Are you sure that was meant in earnest? After all, the license [1] is clear:

Neither the name “Markdown” nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

Plus, if somebody names "specific prior written permission", saying "we haven't heard back since last night so it is okay" seems dishonest to me.

[1] http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/license

Explain to me then why Gruber was okay with Github-flavoured Markdown?

https://twitter.com/gruber/status/507661953498890241

Gruber said in the talk show that it was a flavour of Markdown that had extensions specifically suited for Developers which had elements that wouldn't make sense to have everywhere.

Dunno but it doesn't even matter. You can enforce your copyright whenever you want, that's the rules of the USA. You don't have to enforce it all the time if you don't want to.

Names aren't protected by copyright, and its far from clear that a spec of this type is a non-fair-use derivative work such that it would require a license from the copyright holder of markdown.pl in the first place.

The license only applies to derivatives of the markdown.pl code. The spec describes a "reverse engineered" implementation that is partially interoperable with the original but isn't actually derived from it. Reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability is a legal activity in the US.

It's not obvious what counts as being derived from the software.

Have all the other Markdowns received specific prior written permission?

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