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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.
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
I hope the registered owner prevails and either keeps the domain or sells it to the highest bidder.
We almost lost our production domain. The original dummkopf who set things up registered it all under his own name and individual email instead of using a role based account. He then was fired for unrelated incompetence. Fast forward to the domain renewal coming up.. charge went to his personal CC.. he disputed the charges.. we would have lost it except by pure dumb luck I was in the middle of a DNS migration project and was auditing/cleaning up the registrar details. It was as last minute as you'd want; expiration was within 12h.
One of my pet peeves - people who register for services or get licenses tied to their individual accounts.
They have the copyright on X Server right? I don't see how ICANN's cybersquatting policy wouldn't work here.
nobody thought about this registration process was THAT critical when the idea of a global dns was invented, forever is a long time for ownership of a letter/glyph, is that owner still gonna be here in 30 ? 500 years what is "ownership" of a letter in an infinite technology world?
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?
Modern app appers would have used app.app, not something LUDDITES use like x.org!
Apps!
The whois, though showing leon's email, looks to have the XOrg foundation as the registrant, tech, and admin name.
Surely that's enough for network solutions to say that it's clearly the intent that it's the XOrg foundation that owns it rather than the individual?
If they left me a domain I could sell for 200k$ ish I'd be uncooperative as well.
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.
I'm seeing a lot of comments along the lines of "ah stupid morons, so incompetent to register a client domain using your personal credentials" which tells me these people have not worked a lot in the real world.
I can think of 5 separate occasions where I saw that the CEO, CTO, COO, CO-whoever is in charge couldn't be bothered to come up with the correct credentials or a company account to set up a simple domain for their clients. These aren't mom-and-pop shops-- major ad agencies do this all the time, movie and media companies are slightly better.
Out of desperation, either you set it up yourself, or it doesn't get done and you get fired. Explaining the legality, fragility, and idiocy of this to the people in charge of credentials is pointless-- all they hear is "blah blah blah I won't do what you want me to do"
One place I worked at EVERY TWO YEARS there was a major scramble to get a long-departed tech guy to renew a domain. Each time this happened, the day always finished thusly:"OK, let's never do that again. Give me company credentials and a billing account and I'll set this up to auto-renew".
"Sure, send me an email about it tomorrow, I gotta go play some golf".
Way too obvious
Using that instead would certainly boost the number of visitors by a magnitude... ;-)
Well, IANAL, but just checking the irs.gov site about the non-profit status of the Xorg foundation (EIN:26-4691413) since I couldn't find a 990 form for it online, it looks like the foundation had its tax exempt status revoked back in 2012. AIUI, this is usually because a 990 form hasn't been filed over 3 years to the IRS. According to its website, it still claims to be a public charity, but the IRS page sez otherwise. Anybody familiar with 501(c)(3) to explain the disparity and lack of 990 forms to be found? Maybe this has something to do with this domain problem.
1998 wants its' concern over "cool" TLDs back.
Sure, it's an organization pain for a minor number of services, but it's hardly a travesty that warrants any coverage.
An Open Sores group can't be this incompetent!
Sure this leon guy might be toe email on record but WHOIS shows X.ORG foundation are the registrant. It should be a slam dunk for them to assert control.
Registrant Name:X.ORG Foundation, LLC
Registrant Organization:X.ORG Foundation, LLC
Registrant Street: 163 Tappan Street
Registrant City:Brookline
Registrant State/Province:MA
Registrant Postal Code:02445
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.6172770087
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax: +1.6172770022
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email:leon@shiman.com
Registrant Email: leon@shiman.com
So if isn't registered, would it become unavailable for someone else to grab? Most other one letter com, orgs, and nets are reserved. Only a few are grandfathered in, like x.org.
pro tip to avoid issues with connected production systems:
Get two domains at different registrars and DNS hosters and have your clients know both:
example.com
example.net
Helps with various registration, cc billing and service provider DOS issues.
You give OSS guys a perfectly good pair of scissors and they'll eventually give the fucking thing a third useless handle that gets in the way.
The X.Org domain predates the X.Org Foundation. It was used in the '90s as a destination by The Open Group around [sic] the X Window System.
The x.org domain was first registered in 1993 by the X Consortium, the non-profit follow-on to the MIT X Consortium.
The X Consortium wound down at the end of 1996 and ownership of the x.org domain was transferred to The Open Group along with the rest of the X Consortium assets.
We now return to your regularly scheduled quibbling about how easy it should be to transfer the domain registration to the rightful owner(s).
According to the article the x.org domain was registered to X.Org Foundation LLC, which got dissolved when the 501(c)3 organization was created.
But some organisation (presumably the 501(c)3 organization) must be the legal successor to the Foundation LLC. If they are not able to get the registration renewed just because the PERSON who wound up in the administrative/registration contacts doesn't approve it, then any employee that is in that contacts for any company could hold the companies domain registration hostage. If it where that easy it would happen all the time when a disgruntled admit is fed up with management.
And how exactly is a company supposed to make an aliased email account to register its domain, if it doesn't yet own its own domain?
There is no possible way to do it. It is an impossible technical challenge. You definitely could not use a Gmail account, or ANY fucking email account, and then change it to the specialty corporate account. And don;t even think of having two emails associated with the registration. Registrations are carved in granite, right?
It's IMPOSSIBRU!
So they are praying and waiting for divine intervention?
From what I gather, if they don't have access to the Network Solutions account that the domain name is connected to, they also can't look it up using Network Solutions' domain search (http://www.networksolutions.com/domain-name-registration/index.jsp) because it doesn't allow less than three letters in a domain name. So they can't buy more time by paying for the renewal from outside...