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

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 4:53 PM, Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> wrote:

>
> * 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.
>
> > 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.
>

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?

> 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.

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.

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 :)

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/