What I wouldn’t have asked, though, was “Is John getting paid?” As hard as it may be to believe, back in 2004, the default was that people made new standards for open technologies like Markdown, and just shared them freely for the good of the internet, and the world, and then went on about their lives.
Buried in Anil Dash’s brisk, but comprehensive history of markdown is a thesis of the souls of the internet self. Through asides and parenthetical, Dash is actually painting a parallel timeline of the web, one that is open and free and easily accessible. Markdown stands as proof that that version of the internet already exists. It’s not some imagined future. It’s there, if you look for it. And we can all keep working on it, even as the powers that be try to centralize and commoditize the internets largest corners.