By the way TL;DR; from that Github thread:

It seems that Markdown by default does not support read only checkboxes,
and Github would not implement this behavior because they want to keep
compatibility with other implementations of Markdown:
https://github.com/github/markup/issues/208#issuecomment-24927799

I think that Org mode markup syntax is still in the stage where we can be
liberal enough to change this kind of behavior which would be gladly
received by many people (I hope!), specially since this would change only
the HTML output.

Some feedback on that thread on a feature like this:
- "+1 for readonly (checkboxes). It cannot be that hard..." =>
https://github.com/github/markup/issues/208#issuecomment-27712872
- "+1, i cannot live without checkboxes in readme!"  =>
https://github.com/github/markup/issues/208#issuecomment-27713464
- "I'll die; Please add checkboxes" =>
https://github.com/github/markup/issues/208#issuecomment-28001693

Cheers!

- Waldemar


On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 11:30 PM, Waldemar Quevedo <
waldemar.quevedo@gmail.com> wrote:

> fyi, this feature is heavily requested in Github for their markup project:
> https://github.com/github/markup/issues/208
>
> So +1 on changing this behavior in Org mode markup itself, since there is
> already user demand which would validate this usage.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 12:45 AM, Peter Davis <pfd@pfdstudio.com> wrote:
>
>> I noticed that HTML output contains "[ ]" and "[X]", just like the
>> mark-up. Wouldn't it make sense to use actual unchecked or checked
>> checkboxes in HTML?
>>
>> Is there a simple way to do this that I've overlooked?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> -pd
>>
>>
>>
>