Perens Launches 'OpenSourceParking'

miller60 writes "Open source evangelist Bruce Perens has launched OpenSourceParking, a service designed to boost domain parking on open source software. The project is a response to a large gain by Microsoft in the April Netcraft survey, with Windows' share jumping 5 percent as domain registrar Go Daddy moved 4.5 million parked domains from Linux to Windows Server 2003. To regain that share, Perens is calling on open source users to park undeveloped domains at OpenSourceParking, with the advertising revenue being used to fund political advocacy efforts on behalf of open source software. Parking-for-profit has grown into a significant business in recent years. Despite ambivalence over the value of these sites, Perens appears to believe it merits a focused effort for the open source community."

Comments

Don't.

[KiloByte]

a service designed to boost domain parking on open source software.

Er... and how is this a good thing? Parked domain are an atrocity, something that should be eradicated off the face of the public namespace; the only legitimate use is an "under construction" marker before a real service gets put onto that name.

Somehow, I wouldn't want to push the stats of people who pee on the street the most. The "market presence" isn't always good.

Re:Don't.

[FooBarWidget]

How about reading the website before you post? Let me quote:

Microsoft has been paying the large domain resellers to move their "parked" sites to IIS on Microsoft Server. Moving the parked customers of a single large reseller, GoDaddy.com, caused a shift of 4.5 Million domain names, or 5% of total server share from Apache to Microsoft IIS in the Netcraft report. This is an "appearance" change only, because the sites involved have no content. But managers believe figures like those in the Netcraft report, and act on them. It's time for the Free Software / Open Source community to fight back.

So regardless of whether it's a good or bad thing, it is necessary.

On Netcraft

[natrius]

Netcraft's job is to be the foremost provider of information about what's running the Internet. Anyone who takes the time to actually read what the numbers say will realize that what Netcraft paints as a huge shift is actually a fairly insignificant change. How many servers does it actually take to run all those parked domain names with almost the exact same content? If you look at the data provided on the same page about active sites, you'll see that Apache only dropped 2.32%, while Microsoft gained only 0.92%. Frontloading articles with dubious data while hiding the relevant numbers deep in their charts is extremely misleading and only serves to tarnish Netcraft's reputation. Netcraft's own report states that registrars have a disproportionate influence in market share numbers measured in this way, so what exactly is the value of the data other than to mislead?

Is BSD really dying?

A more elegant solution perhaps?

[samj]

Convince Netcraft that parked domains are irrelevant and have them identify the bulk of the parked domains and remove them from the statistics.

I park domains .

[Shohat]

I own around 70 domains , many of which are parked through Sedo because many of the domains are for sale . Frankly speaking , parking is one of the most idiotic and pointless services on the internet .
In an ideal world , a person that parks a domain name without stating explicitly why it isn't used but parked(like me) , should get a refund and the domain should be taken away , just in case someone actually wants to use it . This is my honest opinion . I get barely 3$ a month from accidental traffic and clicks and once in a while a domain gets sold to a person , for no less than x500 the price I paid .
The only upside of a parked domain is that it gives even more (usually cheaper) advertising space for merchants , and since parked domain traffic usually comes from people that just type a meaningful domain name ( Old Sites for instance )into their Address bar, these are usually very targeted visitors .
But still ,I dont see a reason for OS devs to take any pride in providing the platform for Domain Parking .

Godaddy fails my hosting prerequisite test

[GoatMonkey2112]

I would like to congratulate godaddy.com on their fantastic new parked domain name "turbocow.com".

In order to test the trustworthyness of a potential new web host for my site I put that domain name in my shopping cart then cancelled the order. The next day I went back and the domain name was parked.

So, congratulation to godaddy on their fantastic new parked domain name and the loss of a potential customer.

This will lose credibility for OSS

[chrisbeach]

This is horribly counterproductive for the open-source movement. Consider how this campaign will appear to the media. All that is certain is that stats for Apache hosting will be artificially high because of this campaign. And moreover, the article presents no hard evidence that MS is carrying out any manipulation themselves.

What?

[Sj0]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't this a dumb thing to do? "Oh noes! Windows got 5% more market share in the 'not actually hosting a website' demographic!"

I can't help but wonder if, by choosing battles like this one, the OSS community as a whole is doomed to fail against microsoft; an enemy who often establishes victory first, then fights the appropriate battles.