[SAC] Domain Name Hosting

[Frank Warmerdam]

Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> Currently, OSGeo hosts domains for several of its incubated projects, but
> in most cases, no more than one.
> 
>  1. I would like to motion that for any incubated projects, it is expected
>     that OSGeo will host one domain by default, and more upon request +
>     approval by SAC.

Chris,

This is current practice, and I'm happy to make it policy.

+1

>     1.1) if SAC is supportive of this, I would like to propose that OSGeo
>          hosts these three domains of OpenLayers.

+1

>  2. I would like to know what people's opinions are on hosting domain names
>     for 'friends of OSGeo' projects, ones that are not incubated (usually
>     because they are too small). It seems to me that hosting up to one
>     domain for these would be fair, but that hosting additional domain
>     names should be only associated with a donation of some sort that would
>     financially support that hosting -- so a minimal $500 sponsorship would
>     presumably support some number of years of hosting for domains, and 
>     OSGeo could accept the burden of doing so at that point. 

I don't agree with expecting a sponsorship, but I do think that a motion
would be appropriate for taking on DNS responsibilities for hosted projects
that aren't formally OSGeo projects.  In some cases it might be part of the
same motion in which we decide to provide svn/trac hosting.

I am certainly supportive of handling tilecache.org and featureserver.org,
though I'm a bit ambivalent about taking on the .net and .com domains for
tilecache.  The costs do start to mount up.  Consider me +1 on the .orgs
and +0 on the .net/.com domains.

> I am hopeful that we can agree that hosting project domains -- specifically,
> to prevent them from possibly being abused by organizations who might want to
> 'usurp' the good name that projects have built -- is a task that OSGeo
> can perform as part of its role as a steward of the projects that have
> gone through incubation, and look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Have suffered the conquest of libtiff.org by domain pirates in a botched
handover between me, and the original registrant, I'm keen to have our
project domains under responsible long term management.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent