
X.Org Might Lose Its Domain Name - carlf79
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=X.Org-Domain-Woes
======
danvet
To all the armchair domain admins commenting here: It's a single-letter domain
in one of the traditional non-country TLDs. It only exists because it was
grandfathered in in 1993 [1] I'm pretty sure no one here ever dealed with such
a situation ever. If you try to change anything in its registration without
supplying it in a legally watertight package delivered by lawyers nothing at
all happens, not even extending the registration as the non-owner. Just check
the whois entry and look up the various ICANN domain status codes.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-letter_second-
level_dom...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-letter_second-level_domain)

~~~
BobCat
Maybe they should try calling the admin contact? His firm's phone number is
easily findable. Interestingly, his website is unresolvable, possibly due to
some hero trying to snipe his email?

~~~
GalacticDomin8r
Yeah, I'm sure they hadn't thought of that.

------
bosdev
They're not losing it because of some legal battle or copyright claim, they're
losing it because they lost contact with the guy who really owns it, and
waited until they had one week to go to make the issue public.

~~~
fencepost
No, they're in danger of massive registration headaches because they don't
have a clear chain of proof of migration from the LLC (since dissolved) to the
501(c)3 that succeeded it, and they're either not in contact with the person
who was the administrative contact when the LLC existed or he's being
unhelpful. I'll note that the listing was last updated in 2007, so his name's
been on the contact info for 8+ years - probably at that time they renewed for
as long as the system would allow.

There are provisions in place for replacing contacts on registered domains
when the contact is someone no longer with an organization, and I'm pretty
sure those aren't generally all that onerous (since incorrect changes can be
reverted) - generally something on organization letterhead, probably a
drivers' license photo, that kind of thing. In this case because the
originally registering organization no longer exists they basically need proof
that either the current foundation is legally the successor entity or they
need proof that the domain name was part of the "assets" transferred to the
new 501(c)3. They could probably have just sent in a change request on the
current letterhead, but I suspect that A) they're no longer at that address
either, B) Someone at Verisign said "Hey.... If we force an expiration we can
auction this sucker for $$$$$$", or C) Leon Shiman could be expected to object
to a change.

Another problem is the question of whether there's a registered trademark for
X.Org - if they had that, even if someone else snagged the domain I suspect
they'd be able to get it back via UDRP. Unfortunately it's not clear from a
quick search that it's ever been trademarked, which likely drastically
complicates the situation.

~~~
DanBlake
When 1 character domains expire, they are not available for re-registration-
Just FYI

~~~
drakenot
Why aren't they? Is there a minimum number of characters now?

~~~
0x0
Yes, since 1993.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-letter_second-
level_d...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-letter_second-level_domain)

------
Animats
You used to be able to renew Network Solutions domains without owning them.
This didn't give the renewing party any rights; it just put money in. You
can't do that online any more. But you might be able to do it over the phone.

~~~
Animats
Update: the expiration date for X.org is now 2025-01-19T05:00:00Z. Somebody
paid the bill.

------
monochromatic
> The domain is currently registered in the name of X.Org Foundation LLC,
> which the foundation dissolved when forming the 501(c)3 organization.

How is it even vaguely possible that there's no paperwork assigning all assets
of X.Org Foundation LLC to the 501(c)(3)?

Where is the lawyer who handled this for them?

~~~
0x0
There's something odd mentioned right here:
[http://www.x.org/wiki/BoardOfDirectors/ActionItems/](http://www.x.org/wiki/BoardOfDirectors/ActionItems/)

> We lost 501(c)(3) status because the tax returns for the last 3 years didn't
> get filed on time. This was a surprise(...)

> Thanks to the SFLC we have re-gained our 501(c)(3) status.

~~~
kijin
Gaining or losing 501(c)(3) status does not affect the legal personhood of
your organization.

~~~
cachvico
...but it does say something about the organization of the organization.

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jayess
What a terrible lack of information in this article.

~~~
andrewd18
As is standard for a Phoronix.com "article".

~~~
GalacticDomin8r
Ha, still not as bad as their "benchmarks" though.

~~~
bjwbell
What's bad about his benchmarks? I've cursory glanced at them before and
didn't notice anything in particular (used to write gpu drivers for a living).

------
ars
From: [https://wiki.gandi.net/en/contacts/troubleshooting/lost-
hand...](https://wiki.gandi.net/en/contacts/troubleshooting/lost-handle)

"Since domains can be renewed from any handle, sometimes people create a new
handle to renew a domain. (While this is not a problem in itself, it can
create confusion, so it is only recommended as a last resort.)"

Basically you don't need access to the domain to renew it, you only need
access if you want make changes. A random member of the public can renew a
domain for you without contacting you.

Does it not work that way with Network Solutions? Can someone not just simply
renew it for them?

~~~
duskwuff
I don't know about Network Solutions, but allowing anyone to renew a domain is
not the norm. In some situations, it can even pose legal problems. For
instance, a somewhat common resolution to domain trademark disputes is for the
owner to pledge to discontinue use of a domain and to allow the domain to
expire without renewing or transferring it. If anyone is allowed to renew a
domain without needing the owner's permission, they can potentially put the
owner of a trademark-infringing domain in a sticky situation.

~~~
mmahemoff
Surely the resolution to any trademark conflict would be a domain transfer or
not. "Let it lapse and end up with some other random owner" benefits only the
lawyers.

That said, I can see why some owners may wish to immediately disavow a domain
if they consider it to be a legal or reputational risk. In that case, it can
simply be transferred to another owner, so I don't see why it would be a
problem for anyone to renew it (though payment fraud might be a separate
concern from some registrars).

~~~
duskwuff
Transferring a domain costs money (although not much); more importantly, it
causes the domain to be renewed for an extra year. If the owner of the
trademark doesn't _want_ the domain to exist (e.g, if it's some off-brand use
of their mark), having the domain transferred to them is counterproductive.

~~~
apocalyptic0n3
Just trying to understand this. Wouldn't that actually be good? Wouldn't the
trademark owner want the domain so they could keep it unassigned? If they let
it expire, someone could eventually purchase it and use it for similar
purposes. That seems counterproductive to me, not transferring it.

~~~
duskwuff
> Wouldn't the trademark owner want the domain so they could keep it
> unassigned?

Consider a low-quality domain name like "buy-acme-widgets-cheap-123.com" (for
the trademark "Acme"). There are so many possible domain names of that form
that Acme Co. would have no real interest in trying to protect that specific
one from being misused in the future.

Another messy situation would be if the domain name contained multiple
trademarks belonging to different owners. The holder of one trademark would
probably be reluctant to take ownership of a domain name which also infringed
on another company's trademark!

~~~
dwild
Then they won't care if the settlement is to not use it. It will just point to
nowhere...

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datalist
The article's statement about the administrative/registration contact is not
quite correct.

The given email address seems to belong to this person, but he is still not
the actual owner/registrant of the domain, which is the LLC.

The question now is who is the actual representative, respectively legal
successor, of the LLC. This person/entity should be able to get the contact
address changed to an address under their control.

------
feld
they can file a dispute I guess

[https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/help/dndr/udrp-
en](https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/help/dndr/udrp-en)

edit: according to a verisign employee I know, it costs ~1000-2000USD to do
the dispute process but if they have the trademark and it's not being
challenged (go to trial) it just gets reviewed at meeting and people vote.

------
allendoerfer
A project that loses an asset that valuable, because they cannot get their act
together until one week before the disaster is going to die sooner or later
anyway, even if you disregard that they are indeed already dying.

~~~
michaelmrose
Lots of assumptions there.

~~~
allendoerfer
It is my personal opinion, that I expressed in a commentary (definition: an
expression of opinions or offering of explanations about an event or
situation) section on the internet.

~~~
miander
Which is also why it's a good place for people to critique your opinion. On
that note, I believe you are invoking a fallacy by the name of "I'm entitled
to my opinion".

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davidu
Is it really that hard for someone at X.org to figure out how to escalate to
an exec at NetSol to get a domain renewed?

~~~
davidu
I emailed a friend at Network Solutions to look into this... we'll see.

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elbigbad
So can they just re-register it when it expires, or is the reason they can't
do that because lots of people will be waiting to register it at the moment it
expires?

~~~
viraptor
People are queueing up to take over any domain with moderate amount of
traffic. Since the expiry time is public, there are lists of soon-expiring
domains. This is way worse for a heavy traffic domain, and probably ridiculous
for x.org.

~~~
nickodell
You can't register a single-letter .org anymore.

~~~
artursapek
So they are currently grandfathered in, and as soon as the record expires it's
a dead domain?

~~~
gruez
yep

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anonbanker
epilogue: the domain was not lost.

all conjecture contained herein was for naught.

------
jerrysievert
i really hope keith is able to pull something off. he's a standup guy (i
worked with him in the mid-90's at ncd, where he worked on making X11 even
more awesome).

------
JoshTriplett
I find myself amazed that they wouldn't just renew it for 10+ years at a time,
and do that every couple of years.

~~~
profmonocle
Looks like it was last renewed nine years ago. The last updated date in the
whois record is 2007-01-12.

------
icedchai
Maybe they should just form a new LLC with the same name as the old one, owned
by the new organization.

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aurelien
That sounds incredible -_-'

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bitwize
Since not even the X.Org Foundation is particularly attached to X anymore,
they could just let it lapse and register wayland.org or something.

~~~
sliverstorm
Even if they aren't closely tied to the X software package anymore, they are
literally called "the X.Org Foundation". Why _wouldn 't_ they want to hang on
to x.org?

~~~
bitwize
The X.Org Foundation was formed for stewardship of X, the window system and
its canonical implementation.

Since X is now deprecated tech (the foundation itself even states that Wayland
is the future), a name change is perhaps in order.

~~~
tadfisher
At least according to Keith, I don't think X.org officially holds that stance.

~~~
bitwize
I've seen posts by "X.Org Foundation" on their official Google+ page to the
effect that Wayland is the display server of the future and efforts should be
focused to target it.

