darwinports.com

[Michael Witten]

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
			caughron at gmail.com

		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