You're right: he just does not give a shit. I can see why. What possible upside could there be to engaging with someone who handles themselves like you are here?
Imagine that you're a mechanic working on a motor that uses the ProprietaryNew fastener (hex heads? so 20th century!). Unfortunately, the only ProprietaryNew wrenches are made out of cheap metal, and the sockets strip with regularity. You can't imagine saying a few nasty words about the parentage of everyone in ProprietaryNewCo?
From a comment on Twitter yesterday in response to someone, it doesn't seem that Gruber is particularly interested in engaging with this (though I may be wrong). If that is the case I suspect we'll see a forking of the project and we'll get to see whether a committee will do better.
It may well do - Jeff has a good track record at getting things done and is well respected and well liked - but personally I wouldn't put my mortgage on it because as well intentioned as these things are we all know how design by committee usually turns out.
Care to show us your alternative? It'll be on Github or GoogleCode, or maybe your personal blog, somewhere we can download it, try it out, and criticize it too, right?
Surely 8 years of rage is enough encouragement to write your own replacement for ~1000 odd lines of Perl?
Or by "enraged", did you mean "annoyed enough to write critical posts on random internet sites, but not motivated enough to spend an evening or two solving the problem myself"?
"NERD RAGE" indeed…
The real problem cannot be solved without some forward action on his part. He has refused over and over again.
Sure it can - you write something better, then get everybody who's already using Gruber's version or one of it's presumably also-flawed reimplementations to switch to yours. Or, is "8 years of enragement" really just keyboard-warrior-hyperbole on your part and an excuse to criticize someone who's achieved widespread adoption of some code you claim is 2nd rate, but which haven't bothered to improve or replace?
Besides, it sounds to me like David Greenspan has come up with a fine solution.
Over those years it's grown in usage exponentially, and so has his fame as a sportswriter for team Apple. Throughout that period he's continued to brush off all kinds of attempts to clean up bugs, define ambiguous behavior, or fix the security vulnerabilities. It hasn't mattered what approach people have taken, he just does not give a shit. Here's an example from last week: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2012-Octo...
He's spent so long burning off any goodwill I would have for him on the matter, being cordial just isn't a priority anymore. NERD RAGE.