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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.
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.
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
That's how we did it back in the olden days around here.
This was a fun day when Microsoft let passport.com expire, luckily some slashdoter renewed it for them.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140921073357/http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/25/114201_F.shtml#40
Yeah, I'm standing by just in case.
Do you have ESP?