darwinports dot com
Juan Manuel Palacios
jmpp at macports.org
Tue Jan 8 11:17:06 PST 2008
On Jan 8, 2008, at 2:25 AM, 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.
As Jordan says, this is an already beaten to death horse. We tried a
number of times, all to no avail, to negotiate the transfer of the
domain to us back when we were called DarwinPorts, but now with our
new project name that's a bit of a moot point. Negotiations for a
cease and desist of this leeching activity were also fruitless, just
as were invitations to Mr. Caughron to give a bit back to the project
and invest some of those energies in improving our own web portal,
since he obviously has a thing for web development.
In conclusion, I'll state clearly with my PortMgr hat on that we hold
NO TIES WHAT-SO-EVER to darwinports dot com and have NO INTEREST in
establishing any at the time being. On the other hand, we do wish to
work harder and harder to further consolidate our position as an Open
Source software porting project for the Mac OS X platform, reason why
some of us have been devoting a lot of energies lately to some of the
project aspects that unfortunately were neglected for far too long: a
real website with consolidated information and resulting improved
search engine rankings, a revitalized and readily available project
guide, a unified project name, etc, etc, etc...
Any help in improving and extending in any way any of these efforts
is more than gladly welcomed!
For instance, anyone with obvious tips on how to improve our search
engine rankings should not delay one bit in discussing them with me.
As I said in a post a while ago (http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-dev/2007-December/003922.html
), our web presence has improved dramatically! But as was
appropriately noted by Emmanuel (http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-dev/2007-December/003924.html
), there's still quite a bit of work to be done, as any search for
MacPorts *and* a particular portname does give our dear leech a much
higher ranking. As Jordan asked, our web sources are indeed in svn (/
trunk/www/), so anyone interested in giving us a hand there should
dive right in! I have our www.macports.org URL registered with Google
under my Gmail Id, so I have direct access to very interesting stats
results that will definitely come in handy when improving our rank. To
anyone reading, do contact me if you'd like to discuss this further.
Another area of obvious improvement is finally bringing James' mpwa
at http://db.macports.org into our consolidated web portal, by, among
others, unifying its look and feel with our new one at
www.macports.org and also finding smart ways to integrate its
functionality with that at www.macports.org/ports.php. The sources for
mpwa are at svn's /users/jberry/mpwa, so anyone interested in helping
in that area can also jump right in (warning, mpwa is implemented in
Ruby on Rails). I'm sure work on this area would greatly help balance
what Emmanuel pointed out.
Last but certainly not least, I'd like to state again that there are
also other areas in which we could improve our presence while at the
same time making it clear what our relation to darwinports dot com is
(or lack of it, for that matter). Nevertheless, I wouldn't want to
pollute things like our front page, guide and similar with notes about
darwinports dot com, as that in itself would be, besides ugly, some
form of advertisement for that site (there's already a very loud
warning that springs up at www.macports.org if you're referred to us
from darwinports dot com, cf. svn's /trunk/www/includes/warnings.inc).
Other things like FAQ entries are gladly accepted, though (hint: as
Jordan says, there's the "Website & Documentation" milestone up at our
Roadmap -- http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/roadmap -- to
classify appropriate tickets which could hold suggested patches ;-).
Regards,...
-jmpp
>
>
>
> 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
>> 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
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