Re: domain WebPlatform.com

Hi, Ric–

When you wrote last time, I explained that we didn't want to have a 
redirect, because I've had bad experience with this sort of thing 
before; if you'll recall, I explained that we developed a site for SVG 
development, with a friendly agreement by the owner of the domain 
svg.org that he would redirect that domain to our servers. After several 
years of development, the owner of the domain sold that domain to an 
advertiser, and we lost years of effort and inbound links. However good 
your intentions, you yourself may lose control of the webplatform.com 
domain, and we will find ourselves in a similar situation.

As I explained last time, we would love for you to donate the domain 
name to us; I assure you that W3C is a responsible steward of domain 
names. If you're not willing to donate it, we are willing to talk to you 
to purchase the domain webplatform.com, but we can't risk having our 
identity rest on a domain that we don't control. We didn't receive a 
reply from you at that time, but I'm still interested in that conversation.

Judging by your suggested use of the logo, it would seem to violate at 
least some of our usage guidelines [1].

Your site would seem to offer a similar set of services (learning how to 
use the Open Web Platform), and as such, it would compete with, rather 
than complement our site, and we ask you not to use our logo in this way.

I'm sure that you have good intentions, and that you did not mean to 
come off as hostile, but your email does seem somewhat threatening, and 
implied that you would have a commercial service (i.e. the one-on-one 
coaching) at a very similar domain to ours, with a similar logo, which 
would confuse users.

We have no problem with people using our content for commercial 
purposes; in fact, we encourage it, so long as they provide us 
attribution. But using any of our assets, including our logo or our 
content, on a site that may be easily confused for our site, would 
represent a strong breach of trust, and I ask you not to harm our 
project and community in this way.

If your project is about open domains, it doesn't seem consistent to 
launch a service so very different, that of teaching web developers. I'm 
concerned that if you were to inadvertently harm our community, that it 
would reflect poorly on your charitable mission at OpenDomain.org.

May I suggest that instead of making a competing service, that you put 
your effort into helping our project at WebPlatform.org? We would 
welcome your help, and I'm happy to talk to you about how you can help. 
You could even become a steward of the project, and aid us financially.


[1] http://www.webplatform.org/logo/
[[
To help users distinguish the Web Platform Documentation Site, we ask 
that the logo+text version be used only unmodified, to refer to this 
Site and its content.

Guidelines for using the pre-made logo mark and type:

* Don't state or imply endorsement by Web Platform Docs or WebPlatform.org.
* Don’t make the logo the primary element on your page.
* Make sure that clicking the logo always links to WebPlatform.org.
* Don't modify the logo other than resizing.
* Keep some distance between the logo and other logos and icons on your 
page, as described below.
* Don’t use the logo on a page that contains or displays adult content, 
promotes gambling, promotes violence, contains hate speech, involves the 
sale of tobacco or alcohol to persons under twenty-one years of age, 
violates other applicable laws or regulations or is otherwise objectionable.
* If your product is compatible with Web Platform Docs, make reference 
to this by using the text "for", "for use with", or "compatible with". 
Example: "Search Extension for Web Platform Docs".
* If your product uses content from WPD, use proper attribution to both 
the site and the contributors.
]]


Regards-
-Doug

On 7/18/14 5:43 PM, Ric Johnson wrote:
> Hello!
>
> My name is Ric Johnson, and I am the founder of OpenDomain - "we are
> open source for domains".
>
> We are a non-profit that has given domains to open source groups and
> other non-profits for more than 15 years, including xmpp, ecmascript,
> openajax, drupal, oscon, and more recently schema.org
> <http://schema.org> to Google.
>
> I contacted this group quite a while ago to see if anyone was interested
> in using the domain WebPlatform.Com  but have not received any interest,
> so we are going to develop a web site ourselves.  We plan to offer
> videos and other tutorials on the Web Platform, as well as one-on-one
> coaching.  The project will be complementary to and support WebPlatform.org
>
> We would like to use a modified version of the WebPlatform logo (similar
> but makes it clear it is .COM).  I have reviewed the policies, and this
> seems that is acceptable usage, but I wanted to ask the group to make sure.
>
> Also, if anyone is interested in participating, please let me know!
>
> Thanks you for your hard work
> Ric Johnson

Received on Friday, 18 July 2014 23:29:34 UTC