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

Hi Stephen,

> * Jonathan S. Katz (jonathan(dot)katz(at)excoventures(dot)com) wrote:
>> I agree with most of this - it is important to protect the PostgreSQL digital brand. However, I would make a notable exception for some of the commercially oriented ones (e.g. .expert .consulting) as many of the companies that provide direct support for the PostgreSQL community would be appropriately branding themselves with those names.
>
> I'm not really a fan of this. We do own certain trademarks and if we
> don't at least pretend to enforce them appropriately they could end up
> being lost.

That's fair, but we should see what the trademarks explicitly entitle us to in the context of the gTLDs. If we're not explicitly entitled to "postgresql.expert" then it really becomes a race for the community to buy it up because we may not be able to enforce control of the domain.

>> With that said, I would not just want *any* company to purchase those names, but the PostgreSQL-focused companies that are trusted by the company. For instance, if Dalibo bought "postgresql.consulting" and decided to use it for itself, I personally would not have a problem for that given all the time and money Dalibo has given to the community.
>
> This is the other side of that coin- it'd be quite bad for us if the
> "wrong" company purchased the domain.

Well, yes, I was going through the steps of the story here :P

>> 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'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.

I do like this idea. However, I was trying to see if it would be possible to use this as an opportunity to raise some revenue for the nonprofits supporting the community. With that said, if there is a general consensus to take the domains and have them redirect to appropriate parts of the PostgreSQL website, that is more than fair and benefits the community.

Jonathan