Re: New gTLDs available / how to protect the PostgreSQL brand

Hi Magnus,

On Apr 10, 2014, at 1:41 PM, Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> wrote:

> Not even just the "wrong" company. If Dalibo bought the domain, I'm sure companies like 2ndQuadrant or EDB would be upset - and rightfully so. (Company names just picked out of the blue, substitute for "any postgres company"). Especially if the community somehow endorsed it.
>
> And even if we do accept our "trusted" company, how are you going to come up with a definition for that that everybody agrees on?

Well, we could use the official "Sponsors" list, which now has well-defined criteria, but...

> > However, I do have a potential compromise where I can see both sides benefitting:
> >
> > * Commercially focused gTLDs are initial bought by the community
> > * Community holds a charitable auction among verified companies for specific domain names
> > * Proceeds from auction are donated to one of the PostgreSQL nonprofits
> >
> > That way, we (a) protect the brand, (b) ensure that there is an appropriate representative of the PostgreSQL brand and (c) raise money that can be used for advocacy, if not development efforts.
>
> I think that's a really bad idea. The whole "let's bid for domainnames and make sure we hoard them all" is not a practice we should *encourage* IMO. And any small or medium postgres company would stand no chance in such an auction anyway, should one of the bigger ones be even a little bit interested in it.

...that's a fair point and...

> If we were to go with such an auction, I for one would put my own money down to any group of people who would donate the domain back to the community :P Sort of under the "let's group our bids" thing that tends to happen when we do our conference auctions. If we are that desperate for money.

...and as we are not "desperate" for money.

Anyway, it was more a proposition to help generate some extra revenue for the nonprofits, by no means do we have to do it, particularly if it's going to send the wrong message :-)

> I'd go at this a slightly different way- we'd have the domains bought by
> the community, hosted on PG infrastructure, but then redirected or
> published as parts of our existing website where we already have
> policies and procedures for how commercial companies can be listed,
> de-listed, and generally represented.
>
> This seems like a *much* better solution. We do have our "professional services" section which is where it could go - and then that section should be updated to actually be better than it is now :)

I can throw a +1 towards that.

In terms of *updating* the section, the new services coming in get thoroughly vetted *ahem* but we need to go through all of them and see which ones are still active / relevant. And I'm pretty sure I know who the "we" is for this task.

Jonathan