[Mageia-discuss] Thank you - Merci - Danke - Gracias - Grazie - Obrigado - спасибо

[Michael Scherer]

Le mercredi 22 septembre 2010 à 12:11 -0400, Marc Paré a écrit :
> Le 2010-09-22 10:41, Michael Scherer a écrit :
> > Le mardi 21 septembre 2010 à 16:53 -0400, Marc Paré a écrit :
> >
> >> Would it make sense to also have a section for "mageia" domain owners to
> >> track domain owners who are willing to cooperate? You will eventually
> >> have to do this anyway. I would also consider this also a type of offer
> >> of cooperation and help.
> >
> > Personally, I think we should not collect all domain names to give them
> > to the association :
> 
> The offer was to pass on the domain if the Mageia project wanted to have 
> it. It adds flexibility
> 
> >
> > 1) each domain name will need admin time. Either to manage ( ie, set up
> > vhost, setup the zone, add a entry to the zone etc ), or to renew. While
> > renewing 1 domain name every year is easy, renewing 10 or 20 on 10 to 20
> > different resellers, for different prices and so on will be quite
> > annoying.
> 
> When passing off a domain, the reseller is transferred. You then 
> consolidate all under on reseller. I do this all the time.

Well, depending on the domain, I am not sure that all of them can be
transferred everywhere. 

For example, .ie is restricted as Colin Guthrie explained to me for the
10 years of Mandriva. And it seems that you cannot buy .ie at gandi.net,
which is the reseller we have used. 

So I do not know if they can manage every type of TLD.

> >
> > 2) this will also generate work for people in charge of comptability,
> > and we know that people doing the work of a CFO are a scarce ressources
> > ( CFO may not be the proper word, but I didn't found better ).
> 
> You set a pointer to the main site and there is no need to use the other 
> domain names if you do not wish.

I mean administrative work, like taking care of the bill, reporting them
on the financial report, etc.

I never managed a association as a treasurer, so I do not know how much
paperwork is really required, or if this is really annoying, but all the
one that I know are always already overworked, so I am sure that less
work is better.

  
> >
> > If we use for http :
> >
> > 4) too much domain will be a pain from a ssl point of view. If we start
> > to need ssl for a site, and there is 10 Vhost for it, we will just have
> > 10 time the work to renew certificates.
> 
> Not applicable if you redirect the domains. You would then only have to 
> establish certificates for those domains that you intend to use.

I beg to differ. 

For a http redirect, this will require first to connect using https then
send the redirect at http level, so a valid certificate is needed before
the redirect.

If you speak of a "dns redirect", you can either use a A record, in
which case the issue would still be valid since browser will ask for the
certificate of the first domain name, not the redirected one. Or you can
use a CNAME record, in which case, the issue is the same. 

Maybe I forgot something or overlooked it however, but I am quite
confident of this. And since this will be different TLDs, you cannot use
a wildcard certificate.

Of course, a solution would be to basically use the same certificate
everywhere and let warnings appear, this is not a big issue. 


> >
> > 5) too much domain will also requires more work for simple http, since
> > we will have lots of them.
> 
> Not applicable if you set a pointer. This will also depend on the amount 
> of website developers help who have signed up.

Well, it mostly depend on the number of vhost needed. For exemple, if we
want to have blog.example.fr redirect to blog.example.org, we need to
create a vhost with the redirection. Te issue can be alleviated by using
some mod_rewrite tricks.

But yes, for the case you gave of simple http redirect, this is not
tricky to handle. 

But it depend on what will be needed. Worst case would be to have
conditional vhost for each domain ( like only have a blog on some
subdomain and not others ).
 
> >
> > 6) too much different url will just mean more confusion. I may also fear
> > this could be seen by major search engine as unethic SEO, and thus be
> > punished ( since link farm is a commonly used technic to try to hijack
> > some keywords ). But Google, Yahoo and Bing systems are closed source,
> > so I do not know.
> 
> This is not unethic as all business on the internet do this as common 
> practice. Try to type in URL's for any major corporation, or Yahoo!, 
> Google, Bing etc.

Well, yahoo.fr and yahoo.com do not give the same server, and there is
some high level redirection. So does Dell ( 2 differents sites ), Apple
( not the same server, not the same page, redirection to .com with a
url ), Microsoft ( does like Apple ), Renault ( not the same ip, some
wierd redirection ), Peugeot. 

Ie, among the test i did, only Google and Bind do have the same page
across various urls. 

So my own understanding is that they appear to be different entities to
most search engines.
 
> >
> > If we use for mail :
> >
> > 7) too much domain will simply mean more spam. If we offer multiple
> > email ( like "example at mageia.org, and .de, and .fr and .cn, and so on ),
> > email will simply appear in more list, and therefore be more spammed.
> 
> Domains do not have to be activated for mail. If a domain is not 
> activated for mail service then the mail bounces back to the sender. 
> This is done all of the time.

Well, that why I have said "if we use it for mail".

And I see at least 1 person using the domain name he bought and offered
us to use ( see Tomáš Kindl on
http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=ressources ).

> >
> > 9) and of course, too much domain name, like for websites will mean more
> > confusion.
> 
> It means less confusion. mageia.org will lead to main site; mageia.ca 
> does lead to main site; magiea.nl would lead to main site; mageia.net 
> would lead to main site; mageia.info would lead to main site ... How 
> would this be confusing?

I was not clear, I was speaking of mail address ( if we use them ).
And so this would bring confusion because people often rely on the mail
to see if someone is a official developer or not. Hence, if we use the
domain for mail, people will use them to post on ml, I assume people
will use them. 

Of course, as you said, we can also decide to not use it.

> By doing business the way that you advocate, you actually lower the 
> fidelity that one would assume of a serious group.

We are not creating a business, but a free software project, IIRC. So
some concepts may not be applicable directly. And I think that part of
the fidelity would be earned with local user group with their own
identity and presence, and likely their own choices, independances and
domain names.

> >
> > So
> >
> > 10) by registering every possible variation, we are acting selfishly
> > toward others netizens.
> 
> You have already covered these points up above with #9. #10 is not a new 
> point.

No, 10 is for the paragraph about "lack of good domain name on the
internet" before, based on the problem about finding a name, and about
being nice with other people who may use the name in unrelated way.

> >
> > The only answer I got was about security. But seriously, security of
> > what ? Protecting from people doing phishing ? Bank already fail at
> > this, and you think we can ?
> 
> Who mentioned security? This is all about flexibility.

First time I mentioned the issue 2 days ago. But I think this was on
irc, since I cannot find anything in the mailling list archives :/

( if someone can confirm that I didn't dream... )

-- 
Michael Scherer