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After Years of Serving X11, X.Org Stands To Lose Its One-Letter Domain (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The X.Org domain predates the X.Org Foundation. It was used in the '90s as a destination by The Open Group around the X Window System. While many are expecting Mir and Wayland to eventually succeed the X.Org Server, it seems the X.Org/X11 Server may outlive the valuable domain. Thanks to poor management by the X.Org Foundation, they risk losing access to their one-letter domain. Procrastination, paired with not transferring the domain when forming the non-profit foundation, has led to a last-minute mess. They left the domain registered for years to a person who is no longer involved with X.Org — and doesn't want to relinquish it. In the few days until the domain expires, they are hoping for a "Hail Mary." Let this be a lesson for open-source projects to better manage their assets.
So, the guy whose name is currently on the registration (Leon Shiman, from what I've gathered) doesn't want to turn over the domain, but also isn't going to renew it? Is he being uncooperative on purpose? I know he hasn't been involved for years, but is he being antagonistic, or can they just not get hold of him, or what? It seems like this should be relatively simple to clear up, so what am I missing?
The challenge is that a number of companies don't have the notion of role based accounts, so when you are faced with registering something of the sorts, it is a challenge trying to work out the best way to do this, without tying the account to a transient entity (any employee or physical resource is transient).
Companies that don't have the notion of aliased accounts or special account types for this purpose are just asking for issues.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Yes, he's listed as a contact but it's registered to "X.ORG Foundation, LLC". They just need to contact networksolutions. tell them the sob story and jump through the hoops (they may need to show incorporation docs) to prove they are actually the X.ORG Foundation. I've successfully done this for a client in the past. Maybe times have changed since then.
If said person was a founding member with an actual stake in the company, I wouldn't be too hard on them. I was part of a start-up and in the beginning it's all about making a profit and taking whatever shortcuts you can. If you get caught up in doing things "proper" and planning for when you have hundreds or thousands of employees you're probably not going to get there. Early Microsoft was hardly perfect but Gates ran with it. Early Oracle was hardly perfect but Ellison ran with it. Early Facebook was hardly perfect but Zuckerberg ran with it. Worrying too much about growth pains means you lose sight of the growth being the hard part and the pains the easy part. If you're just "an employee" and do things with your personal accounts then yeah, you deserve what's coming to you.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You call him a "dummkopf", but I know several cases where some "dummkopf" was the reason why a domain existed at all and not just some third party lock-in URL, and despite several attempts to transfer the domains to a role account, the projects would have sooner let the domains expire than take responsibility of them. It's always a mixture of not caring about things that seem to take care of themselves (thanks to the "dummkopf" paying out of his own pocket) and organizational red tape which makes these things more of a chore than they need to be. The people who make the bureaucracy bearable always get shafted: Nobody thanks them and in the end they're the "dummkopf".