macports-dev  

Re: darwinports.com

Jordan K. Hubbard
Mon, 07 Jan 2008 23:39:45 -0800

I think there's little point in pursuing this further. We went through the whole froo-frah about this back when MacPorts was called DarwinPorts and darwinports.com was first brought to the project's attention. At that time, we negotiated unsuccessfully for the domain transfer and ultimately chose to change the project name to MacPorts and extensively rebrand the project (after, of course, obtaining all the appropriate macports domains this time around).
The matter should now rest since it's hard enough just enforcing your actual project name much less going after derivatives. What next? Someone could register any one of macosports.com, macosxports.com, macsoftwareports.com, etc etc (all of which are closer to macports and even more likely to cause confusion) and the project would quickly find itself spending more time chasing people with sticks than actually maintaining ports. The darwinports.com horse is already dead and buried, and the set of folks who still remember it as "darwinports" is a decreasing number of people, so at some point the problem will ultimately solve itself. 

- Jordan

On Jan 7, 2008, at 10:55 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
Well, we're aware that this problem exists. Partly as a result of this problem, since no agreement on the transfer of the domain name into our control could be reached, the name of the project was changed to MacPorts. The correct official web site for this project is http://www.macports.org/ . It was previously http://www.darwinports.org/ . It has never been darwinports dot com.
I don't know if anyone has attempted to contact the owner of darwinports dot com recently to negotiate a transfer. I'd be happy to do so on behalf of the project if desired, but we should coordinate this so that we don't all independently try to contact him. Someone from portmgr should chime in here and advise. 


On Jan 8, 2008, at 00:38, Michael Witten wrote:


Maintainers of MacPorts,

There is a fairly benign, but terribly frustrating
issue with which you should deal swiftly.

Somebody by the name of Mat Caughron is running a
mirror of the MacPorts project at

        http://darwinports.com/

Unfortunately, such a usually kind favor is actually
a mischievous attempt to garner advertisement revenue
and glean user email addresses.

While these ulterior motives are trashy, what disturbs
me most is the confusion that results from 2 seemingly
viable ports systems, especially since Mat Caughron not
only hosts the system under the name DarwinPorts, but he
also tries to hide the direct connection with MacPorts.

Which one is the "correct" system?

This semblance of disorganization and trashiness drives
people away from open source or at least to other projects
like fink.

It is a branding issue.


I advise the following:

        (1)     Clarify the situation in the FAQ, in the Wiki,
                and on the main page.

                It should be stated in rather clear terms that
                darwinports.com is attempting to rebrand MacPorts
                mischievously for email gathering and unwarranted
                advertisement revenue.

                A strong statement makes it clear which project
                is official.


        (2)     Explicitly state somewhere that derivatives must
                acknowledge MacPorts clearly; this will help with
                future troubles.


        (3)     Try to negotiate the transfer of the ownership of
                darwinports.com to the MacPorts team; he can app-
                arently be contacted at
                
                        Mat Caughron
                        (408) 910-1266
                        [EMAIL PROTECTED]

                In any case, this subject of darwinports.com came up
                once in discussions:

                        
http://osdir.com/ml/opendarwin.darwinports/2004-02/msg00090.html

                and though Mat Caughron pretended to be a novice, who
                was just having fun and trying to support a project, it
                came to light that he had tried and is still trying to
                peddle other projects:

                        
http://osdir.com/ml/opendarwin.darwinports/2004-02/msg00091.html

                Furthermore, James Berry contacted Mat Caughron a couple
                of years ago in order to resolve this point of contention
                by initiating a transfer of the domain ownership to the
                project. In return, Matt Caughron required a PowerBook.


                With (1), it won't really matter if this transaction
                is refused.

Sincerely,
Michael Witten

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