Re: domain WebPlatform.com

Doug,

I seem to have taken great offense to your remarks.  I am writing this
email in a very heated mood, and I probably should edit it, but I think the
topics I raise should be discussed, so I will keep the majority of it.  I
do hope to be able to work together, but you have questioned my integrity
several times, so I feel I must respond.

I never received any response to my request.  I checked all my emails and
can not find any previous discussion even on the email list archives.
 Please forward it to me if I am mistaken.

I am sorry to hear what happened with SVG.org, but please do not put
OpenDomain in the same category.  Early on in the project, we were offered
millions of dollars for one domain, but we gave it away for Free, only to
be later sued by that person.  That almost killed the project, but I fought
to keep it going for years. More recently, we were contacted by a broker
who offered $20k for another domain, but we told her that we do not sell
domains, they should be used to support Open Source.  We were ecstatic to
learn that that she was working in behalf of one of the top promoters of
open source: Google wanted to participate in OpenDomain!  So we gave the
domain Schema.org to them for Free - all we asked was to to be mentioned in
the press release and a link.  Unfortunately, they still have yet to
fulfill their promises. Sorry to go off on a rant, but I have personally
spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire domains from squatters
and gave them all away for Free to support open source and non-profits and
it riles me for someone to question my "good intentions".

I am also not sure what your intention for the paragraph "If your project
is about open domains.." is intended to convey.  OpenDomain is about "open
source for domains". WebPlatform.com should be about commercial application
of the Web Platform.  I do no see any conflict that I support multiple
projects - I also founded CharityCoin.Org . We mint celebrity coins to
support charities - check it out and let me know what you think!

Also, we do not see if someone offers a service on .COM that is not
available on the .ORG  that is can be considered competing. We do not want
redirects for our domains - we ask that the domains be used with content
that benefits the web.

Several years ago, I gave OpenAjax.org in care of the W3 to help
standardize Ajax.  The problem is that developers did not know what
"OpenAjax" was.  To this day, I think only Dojo ever implemented it for a
short time.  I see this same problem again with WebPlatform - I have gone
to dozens of web developer meetups and only one person even heard of the
Web Platform project.  I think that everyone has done some great work
contributing content, but the marketing needs much more exposure.

Ok - again I am sorry for my tone of this email - I will try to be more
constructive:
That is our hope for WebPlatform.com - to help gain exposure for the Web
Platform. We would like it to be used to as a separate site that has
COMmercial value. That does not mean that I would profit - I just believe
that would encourage more participation or at least help with some costs.
We would be happy to contribute the domain - to the Web Platform as a
separate organization.  Has there been any discussion of a foundation?

Thank you for your understanding
Ric

On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 7:29 PM, Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org> wrote:

> 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
>>
>
>
>