[FFmpeg-devel] Voting results for NGO

[Michael Niedermayer]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 11:20:12AM -0500, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 7:44 PM, Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at> wrote:
> > ronald will be trying to contact the owner of ffmedia ...
> > maybe he doesnt need it and is willing to transfer it to us, if that
> > fails i guess we will have to vote about which other domain to use.
> 
> The current owner is "domainsbyproxy", which is an "anonymizer", i.e.
> you reg with them, they reg the domain and you stay anonymous. Since
> the domain is unused, I read this more as a "I own 1000 domains and
> sell them for $$$$%". I called them and they indeed offer a service to
> transfer domain names, it costs $70 for the service, but the actual
> domain might cost several-$1000. I don't think that's a good
> investment at this point.

>=100$ is not acceptable (mainly because i dont want to pay domain
squatters) but if i understand the situation correctly, we do not know
if this is owned by a domain squatter. Theres an anonymizer and there
can be valid reasons why someone does not want to put his name in the
whois records.
If theres some way to contact the actual anonymous owner iam in favor
of asking him. If it turns out its a domain squatter, case closed he
can keep the domain.
Thats of course just if asking is free (which i assumed)
Also domainsbyproxy says "but dont even think about using our serivce
to ... morally objectionable activities"
i do think domain squatting is morally objectionable.


> 
> We can simply go by the name anyway and host it on ffmpeg.org and
> mplayerhq.hu for now. I would actually be in favour of this, so that

Honestly iam not in favor of this, because if we do pick ffmedia and
ffmedia.org is owned by a squatter that would be really annoying.
We dont know what the guy might put up on there, ffmedia is something
people should donate to ... and if ffmedia.org is owned by an anonymous
person donations could hit the wrong pocket.

So my oppinon is definitly if we can get ffmedia.org at normal registration
cost take it and make the NGO ffmedia/foundation for free mutltimedia as
the vote result says.

OTOH if we cant get ffmedia.org at normal registration/transfer cost then
ffmedia cannot be used anywhere to refer to the NGO because we would take
risk of donators ending up at ffmedia.org which is under the control of an
anonymous person who could pose as us and take donations.


> at least the process keeps moving. Later on, we might be able to
> negotiate a better deal with the current owner.

My gut feeling says the deal would be worse because now its just a 
inconvenience for us to change away from ffmedia but later if the official
name is ffmedia its more painfull not to have ffmedia.org thus a squatter
(if it is a squatter at all which we dont know) would likely ask for more.


> Alternatively, we take
> a different domain for the hosting of the NGO under the current name
> (e.g. ffmultimedia.org, or so), at least for now, or (worst case)
> another name for the NGO...

what exactly do we need for the NGO registration? Do we need abbreviation
and full name?

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

it is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make
their appearance in the world. -- Aristotle
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/attachments/20091221/9549ac05/attachment.pgp>