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Hijacking Trust? Bitvise Under Fire for Controlling Domain of FOSS Project PuTTY

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Re: Hijacking Trust? Bitvise Under Fire for Controlling Domain of FOSS Project PuTTY

#31

Post by brabel »

mieses wrote: post #6
greatgib wrote: post #3

Here they think that what is doing Bitvise is legal but I think that it might not be the case in the law of a number of countries and even possibly in domain names "regulation"? This is parasitism, or deceptive practice to hold the domain name of a competitor claiming your are to be associated with the other project.

extremely subjective. the damage of allowing schoolmarm types to determine laws based on what they think is parasitic or deceptive is more dangerous than the unambiguous and coherent concept of property. PuTTY owns https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ There are a number of strings in this domain that cause me great distress. Should I be allowed to seize their property?

What a ridiculous argument. Every project and company that has a trademark should be allowed to protect that, including by claiming domains clearly intended to appear associated with their trademark. Being offended by strings has nothing to do with that and it’s childish to try to derail the conversation like that.

Re: Hijacking Trust? Bitvise Under Fire for Controlling Domain of FOSS Project PuTTY

#34

Post by udev4096 »

msgodel wrote: post #10
udev4096 wrote: post #7

[flagged]

Putty isn't just ssh, it's also the VTE and serial terminal. Also it has its own keys/configs/shortcuts people are almost certainly used to. I don't think there's even an easy way to migrate putty shortcuts (I can't remember what they're called) to OpenSSH.

I forgot. Windows users are so inefficient that they require a GUI for doing just about anything. Have fun being inefficient!

Re: Hijacking Trust? Bitvise Under Fire for Controlling Domain of FOSS Project PuTTY

#35

Post by whywhywhywhy »

SpaceNugget wrote: post #14
msgodel wrote: post #11

I don't think Bitvise is even doing anything wrong here? There's nothing wrong with running what is essentially a fan site and promoting your own things on it.

It's a company who bought the domain of the exact name of the largest open source project that they directly compete with and then advertise themselves on it? This is at the very least unethical. You can't just use a competitors exact name to run a website that tries to snipe users looking for your competitor and call it a "fan site". The comments on this submission are pretty strange. What are the chances that a bun…

It's definitely unethical but the creator of Putty keeps insisting and repeating that the Putty website is the long old homepage style URL and "always has been" and "if people search they can find it".

I think if they actually have a problem with it and are not just repeating that to cope they need to start acting like they have a problem with it. Trademarks need defending and you come out the door with the mental model that it's yours, you own it, the other group are in the wrong. If you opened your trademark dispute with "Well our trademark has always been X and people know to find us at X" you're gonna lose your dispute.

It's just hard to argue it's actually a real problem if the individual it's affecting keeps sort of pretending and saying that it's not even if deep down it is.

Re: Hijacking Trust? Bitvise Under Fire for Controlling Domain of FOSS Project PuTTY

#36

Post by goku12 »

TrevorStepnikkk wrote: post #30
mnaimd wrote: post #9

> “The difference is not one of profit, it is one of philosophy. You believe software can be managed by a committee. I believe software requires an owner, otherwise it is dead.” This justification is even worse than the domain squatting itself. Some of the most influential software in history (Linux, Git, GCC, and yes, PuTTY) thrived under community-driven development. The idea that software "dies" without a single c…

I see where you're coming from, but I think your examples actually prove the opposite point. I've always seen Linux and Git not as projects run by a committee, but as projects guided by a single, trusted leader. Linus Torvalds is the owner of the kernel's vision. He has the final say. That isn't community consensus; it's benevolent dictatorship. So while the putty.org situation is shady, I believe the core idea is ri…

I seriously doubt that they're talking about leadership when they say ownership. Otherwise it would make little sense because few foss projects are democracies anyway.

Re: Hijacking Trust? Bitvise Under Fire for Controlling Domain of FOSS Project PuTTY

#37

Post by udev4096 »

mrweasel wrote: post #32
112233 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use putty on linux. now what?

I hope you do, that would be pretty funny. Like using PowerShell as your shell on Linux.

No one in their right mind would use powershell core. zsh, fish and plenty of other shells are way mature and doesn't have Microshit behind it

Re: Hijacking Trust? Bitvise Under Fire for Controlling Domain of FOSS Project PuTTY

#38

Post by whywhywhywhy »

ColinWright wrote: post #18
msgodel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy domain names with competitors names in them. People do this all the time. If you don't want people doing that you need to register the names yourself.

So someone who has written something and made it available for the common good, and makes no money from it, should now go and buy every possible domain that people might use in a deceptive manner. This is a great example of what drives people away from providing anything for free.

Yes, all the ones actually worth owning are only a few dollars if you have a unique project name, you don't need "every possible domain" you just need one that looks legit.

Unfortunately this is the world we live in where if you don't then someone else will and they'll abuse it so you have to act defensively.

Either you put the time into the project and care about it in which case you should spend the few dollars a year defending it from drama like this, or you don't care even a few dollars worth about the project in which case just let whatever happens happen because you don't care, a .org is the price of a few coffees.

Only a few parts of the world you can leave a bike unlocked on the street, and the internet contains the whole world.

Re: Hijacking Trust? Bitvise Under Fire for Controlling Domain of FOSS Project PuTTY

#39

Post by mrweasel »

udev4096 wrote: post #37
mrweasel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you do, that would be pretty funny. Like using PowerShell as your shell on Linux.

No one in their right mind would use powershell core. zsh, fish and plenty of other shells are way mature and doesn't have Microshit behind it

Not going to comment on the authors state of mind but: https://starkandwayne.com/blog/i-switched-from-bash-to-power...

Re: Hijacking Trust? Bitvise Under Fire for Controlling Domain of FOSS Project PuTTY

#40

Post by fifteen1506 »

Look, I understand. Excess of information leads people to start skimming all text. But look:

"Below suggestions are independent of PuTTY. They are not endorsements by the PuTTY project."

Above of this is a direct link to PuTTY's website.

I'm afraid this is a non-issue. Sure, you are free to rant, and I appreciate the good intentions behind it, but count me out on raging.

www.putty.org SHOULD be the correct address. Failing that, LINKING to the correct website is an acceptable measure, specially when such linking is on top.

Want to blame someone? Blame SEO, where a decent 2000 website with no issues whatsoever is pushed down the results.

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