makr actually came out of D... we started by trying some completely different features, but figured it was best for both to try them as separate things. Lots of people like D the way it is, so we spun it out into it's own thing.
Lot's of people feel that D* is unpolished and lacks advertised features like moving from pod to pod, real solid federation and so on. D* developers said they didn't abandon those, but they surely look distracted with too much UI stuff in Mark.
