X.Org Might Lose Its Domain Name
Apparently for the past half-year there have been some "ownership struggles" of the X.Org domain name, which the X.Org Foundation Board of Directors have been trying to resolve in private. However, they haven't had any luck and the domain name is set to expire now on 19 January.
Board member and secretary Daniel Vetter summarized at yesterday's X.Org BoD meeting, "x.org expires on the 19th Jan. The board tried to handle this since over half a year (in private, for a few reasons). Lots of phone calls but no real progress. We need a legal trail from the LLC to the current org. Keith contacted SLFC for that."
Their path forward is "Keith [Packard] to attempt a Hail Mary" while Peter Hutterer is to update the board on a "Plan B" in private on the board's mailing list.
There's just over one week to go until the X.Org domain would expire and it appears the foundation doesn't have access to it. The domain is currently registered in the name of X.Org Foundation LLC, which the foundation dissolved when forming the 501(c)3 organization.
The administrative/registration contacts around the X.Org domain are that of Leon Shiman, someone who used to be heavily involved in X.Org and was one of the organization's found members but hasn't been involved for quite a number of years.
This isn't actually a new issue and at least one X.Org member has talked privately about this issue for years, but with procrastination and now hitting crunch time, all hands are on deck. The X.Org domain was originally owned by The Open Group. Hopefully the X.Org Foundation manages to come up with a quick solution to keep this important domain.
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