The creator of the original Markdown requested that the standardized version be renamed to avoid using the word “Markdown”.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-commo...

…and threatened legal action against anyone using the word “Markdown” in a way he did not approve of.

Jeff Atwood goes out of his way to be courteous to Gruber in this post, but frankly, I think Gruber was being a jerk here, using his claim to the name to tyrannise an open source community that he has otherwise not been involved with in the slightest the last ~17 years.

TIL Aaron Schwartz had at least some role in creating markdown also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gruber#History

Yes, that's exactly my point. There already is a standardized version, created by the author of the post itself.