Okay. This is open-source right?
The name might be locked but my perception on the life and death of a piece of software is by its use.
###Who is using Markdown?
The biggest users of markdown today is Reddit, StackExchange and Github.
###Solution
You guys have already sat down and wrote a spec together. You literally hold the life of Markdown in your hand. Gruber doesn’t wan’t to share the name and help evolve it? Guess what… start your own markup language. It might have the same syntax but as we have learned, syntax is not patent-able. Only implementation. And names can be trademarked.
So the solution… have your own implementation… have your own name and copy the Syntax.
That’s it. Problem solved. With the big three changing the name… Markdown will only be a relic of the past.