How Markdown Took Over the World
The most successful technology standards emerge not from corporate control but from individual creators solving genuine problems and freely sharing solutions—as Markdown's journey from blogging tool to AI infrastructure demonstrates.
Summary
John Gruber created Markdown in 2004 while writing his Apple-focused blog Daring Fireball. What began as a simple plain text formatting tool for bloggers now underpins modern internet infrastructure—from AI systems to note-taking apps to cloud storage. The key insight: grassroots innovation, freely shared, can outlast and outperform corporate-controlled standards.
Key Points
- Origin story: Gruber built Markdown during the blogging explosion, inspired by earlier systems like Textile and refined with help from Aaron Swartz, then seventeen
- Design philosophy: Based on existing email formatting conventions (asterisks for emphasis, hashes for headers), making adoption intuitive
- Community evolution: Multiple "flavors" emerged organically (GitHub-Flavored Markdown, CommonMark) without fragmenting the core standard
- Unexpected reach: Today's AI companies control their most advanced systems through Markdown files—a technology created freely decades ago
Ten Reasons Markdown Succeeded
- Clever, memorable naming
- Solved a real problem for its creator
- Built on existing plain text behaviors
- Community ready to adopt
- Flexible across contexts
- Perfect timing with blogging's rise
- Aligned with developer tool evolution
- Transparent "view source" philosophy
- Free of intellectual property restrictions
- No legal encumbrances
The Generosity Thesis
Dash emphasizes that the internet's core infrastructure relies on people creating without demanding compensation. This contrasts sharply with contemporary tech billionaire culture. "The Internet...don't run without the generosity and genius of regular people."
Connections
This note is currently standalone—no existing notes share direct thematic overlap with Markdown's history or open-source philosophy.