# History of HedgeDoc

## It started with HackMD

HackMD is the origin of this project, which was mostly developed by Max Wu and
Yukai Huang. Originally, this was open source under MIT license, but was
[relicensed in October 2017 to be AGPLv3](https://github.com/hackmdio/codimd/pull/578).
At the same time, [hackmd.io](https://hackmd.io) was founded to offer a
commercial version of HackMD.

The AGPLv3-version was developed and released by the community, this was for a
while referred to as "HackMD community edition".

*For more on the splitting of the projects, please refer to [A note to our community (2017-10-11)](https://hackmd.io/c/community-news/https%3A%2F%2Fhackmd.io%2Fs%2Fr1_4j9_hZ).*

## HackMD CE became CodiMD

In June 2018, CodiMD was renamed from its former name "HackMD" and continued to
be developed under AGPLv3 by the community. We decided to change the name to
break the confusion between HackMD (enterprise offering) and CodiMD (community
project), as people mistook it for an open core development model.

*For the whole renaming story, see the [issue where the renaming was discussed](https://github.com/hackmdio/hackmd/issues/720).*

## CodiMD went independent

In March 2019, a discussion over licensing, governance and the future of CodiMD
lead to the formation of a distinct GitHub organization. Up to that point, the
community project resided in the organization of hackmdio but was for the most
part self-organized.

During that debate, we did not reach an agreement that would have allowed us to
move the repository, so we simply forked it. We still welcome the HackMD team
as part of our community, especially since a large portion of this code base
originated with them.

*For the debate that lead to this step, please refer to the [governance debate](https://github.com/hackmdio/hackmd/issues/1170) and [the announcement of the new repository](https://github.com/hedgedoc/hedgedoc/issues/10).*

## CodiMD became HedgeDoc

Many people opened issues in the codimd server repository for bugs and features, which they saw at the HackMD codimd.
The fact, that there have been two projects with the same purpose and the same name was very confusing.
The solution was to find a unique, new name. This process started in April 2020 with a [call to participation](https://community.codimd.org/t/renaming-yet-another-time/102).
It took some time, but in [July 2020 the community agreed on the name "HedgeDoc"](https://community.codimd.org/t/codimd-becomes-hedgedoc/170) and some months later [a new logo was found](https://community.codimd.org/t/time-to-find-the-hedgedoc-logo/171/4).
Finally, in November 2020 version 1.7 was released. Even if the renaming was originally planned for version 2.0, the dev team decided to release 1.7 under the new name to create a smooth transition.