Perens Launches 'OpenSourceParking'

miller60 writes "Open source evangelist Bruce Perens has launched OpenSourceParking, a service designed to boost domain parking on open source software. The project is a response to a large gain by Microsoft in the April Netcraft survey, with Windows' share jumping 5 percent as domain registrar Go Daddy moved 4.5 million parked domains from Linux to Windows Server 2003. To regain that share, Perens is calling on open source users to park undeveloped domains at OpenSourceParking, with the advertising revenue being used to fund political advocacy efforts on behalf of open source software. Parking-for-profit has grown into a significant business in recent years. Despite ambivalence over the value of these sites, Perens appears to believe it merits a focused effort for the open source community."

Let's hope it's as successful as his UserLinux ini

Seriously - is this worth Bruce wasting his time on?

We all know that all the vast majority [netcraft.com] of high performing websites run Apache on a free unix-like O/S.

Who cares if Microsoft can claim an extra 5%? Do such stats ever influence companies choosing a platform?

Re:Let's hope it's as successful as his UserLinux

Do such stats ever influence companies choosing a platform?

Such stats are the reason Windows is in the place it is today.

Re:Let's hope it's as successful as his UserLinux

"The point is that IIS came from 0% to 25% in 5 years, and is still growing."

Uh, apart from this blib in the radar, IIS has been pretty stable at around 20% since october 2003 (and before that date, IIS's share was DROPPING). And if you look at stats at Netcraft, you will see that IIS made an entry to the list back in 1996. So it's 10 years, not 5. In about 18 months, IIS rose to about 20% and now, over EIGHT years later, it's STILL at that 20%!

Oh, be still my beating heart!

Re:Let's hope it's as successful as his UserLinux

There is a bigger issue here... Netcraft should not be counting parked domains at all. It should be counting sites that actually have valid content. The big registrars parking services are well known and easily identifyable. You don't need to weed out 100% of parked domains, just the majority. When netcraft counts parked domains, the results lose meaning.

It's like a pollster calling phone numbers sequentially, and claiming that all unanswered calls indicate that the person has "no opinion" on the subject.

Don't.

a service designed to boost domain parking on open source software.

Er... and how is this a good thing? Parked domain are an atrocity, something that should be eradicated off the face of the public namespace; the only legitimate use is an "under construction" marker before a real service gets put onto that name.

Somehow, I wouldn't want to push the stats of people who pee on the street the most. The "market presence" isn't always good.

Re:Don't.

How about reading the website before you post? Let me quote:

Microsoft has been paying the large domain resellers to move their "parked" sites to IIS on Microsoft Server. Moving the parked customers of a single large reseller, GoDaddy.com, caused a shift of 4.5 Million domain names, or 5% of total server share from Apache to Microsoft IIS in the Netcraft report. This is an "appearance" change only, because the sites involved have no content. But managers believe figures like those in the Netcraft report, and act on them. It's time for the Free Software / Open Source community to fight back.

So regardless of whether it's a good or bad thing, it is necessary.

Re:Don't.

Here's an idea, a novel one, I know. How about lobbying Netcraft to, say, better track and determine which domains are parked, versus 'real'? It shouldn't be too hard. Some regexs, bayesian stuff, and then they could differentiate servers with 'real' content, which is a win win situation - their statistics are more relevant, and "we" solve the problem.

Re:Don't.

How do you get an Under Construction sign without actual hosting?

Bruce has setup a service to allow your open source project to have an Open Source under construction sign.

And yet

their attitude is quite the oppopsite

http://www.google.com/domainpark/ [google.com]

Mebbe they aren't 'perfect' after all.

Open source spam!

Hey, how about another campaign to try to get spammers to use more open source software? Just because their business is of NEGATIVE VALUE as it POLLUTES THE NETWORK doesn't mean it shouldn't be endorsed by the free software community.

Wasting time? I don't think so

Every time Microsoft gains ground, they drive that point home with advertising campaigns and news releases. This adds to consumer confidence for their products. If IIS is serving on more than 50% of all websites, there must be something to it. Or so the logic goes.

So the thing to ask yourself is, do you want Microsoft to get those wins? Do you really think anyone besides you is looking at the realities of webserving? Or is your manager going to buy into the press release hype and make IT decisions for you to implement?

It is absolutely necessary and useful to block Microsoft wins in this area if you value your freedom to choose Apache. If you're posting here on Slashdot, you're most likely not the guy who is signing the paychecks in your company, and since you're not that guy, you're beholden to his decisions. Better to cut MS off at the pass than to face them down once they've got their foot in the door.

Giving decent information would work better

It is absolutely necessary and useful to block Microsoft wins in this area if you value your freedom to choose Apache.

If it's so important to fight Microsoft's publicity machine, why not simply discredit it? Sure, it's hard to get through to some people, and some will never get the message. If you just try to mislead them further, though, you're not getting through to them at all, and those people will just go scurrying back to Microsoft again after its next media release.

A good way to start would be to compile some real information that's backed up by verifiable and reputable citations, clearly and concisely demonstrating that Microsoft's claimed advantage is due to a small number of large companies that use IIS to host vast numbers of identical, useless parked websites that contain no information. After this, it might be useful to compile and present additional information that shows the real distribution between Apache, IIS, and whatever else, based on a clearly stated and reasonable definition of what makes a useful production website. ... and if you happen to go this far, make it look more reputable than Microsoft's arguably baseless claims.

Throw it together on a straightforward, direct-to-the-point website that gives Microsoft credit where it's due, but explains clearly where and why credit isn't due. Provide the information so that people can easily be referred to it, and it'd be much more helpful than trying to beat Microsoft at it's own spin and misleading of the consumer.

If there's a weakness in Microsoft's marketing techniques, it's not that someone else can out-market them by providing even more fluff. The biggest weakness is that Microsoft's claims often don't really have any substance. If it's important to you to stop Microsoft from misleading consumers, you should really start by pointing out to them that they're being misled.

I have a lot of respect for what Bruce Perens has done in the past and the stances that he's taken on issues, but I don't really understand this one at all.

Fundamental Flaw

The real problem with this plan (idealogical arguments aside) is that the vast majority of those who will bother to switch will naturally be the open source advocates. These are the ones who are most likely to be running an open-source web server on an open-source OS anyway, so the stats will hardly be shifted at all.

Netcraft is an indicator, not an objective

Symptoms are information. Why did "Go Daddy" change from Linux to Windows Server? Can something be done about it? Those are IMHO the questions.

If the Netcraft survey is clouded by artificial parking, then the survey loses utility (assuming it has any in the first place, as the domain parking numbers make seeing usage statistics difficult). You can correct with Photoshop your bank account receipt, and that won't make you any richer.

When I first saw this

I first thought: You have a large field, paved with asphalt. There are cans of paint all around. You park your car, and paint the lines around it.

On Netcraft

Netcraft's job is to be the foremost provider of information about what's running the Internet. Anyone who takes the time to actually read what the numbers say will realize that what Netcraft paints as a huge shift is actually a fairly insignificant change. How many servers does it actually take to run all those parked domain names with almost the exact same content? If you look at the data provided on the same page [netcraft.com] about active sites, you'll see that Apache only dropped 2.32%, while Microsoft gained only 0.92%. Frontloading articles with dubious data while hiding the relevant numbers deep in their charts is extremely misleading and only serves to tarnish Netcraft's reputation. Netcraft's own report states that registrars have a disproportionate influence in market share numbers measured in this way, so what exactly is the value of the data other than to mislead?

Is BSD really dying?

A more elegant solution perhaps?

Convince Netcraft that parked domains are irrelevant and have them identify the bulk of the parked domains and remove them from the statistics.

Marketing Plan

So where's the "OpenSourceParking Girl"?

Dumbest Idea Ever

I think it's pretty clear that this is perhaps the dumbest idea that has ever been put forward by anyone, ever. I would be a little ashamed to have mentioned it as an idea to some reporter, a little bit more ashamed to have actually coded something to do it, and finally I wouldn't ever even consider wasting thousands of people's time by putting it up as a news story.

First of all, if Apache is at the top of the Netcraft survey *because* of domain parking, why would any "open source advocate" draw attention to this fact by staging some sort of war to see who can get the most unused domains to show a useless page with AdSense links on it? The massive disaster that is ICANN's UDRP requiring everyone to have some horrible "under construction" web site is not a reason to choose a web server; and the people who would choose a web server by raw numbers are probably too dumb to do even that much research.

Second of all, why would anyone attempt to remedy the problem by asking open source users who are almost certainly already using Apache if they have a domain in the first place to park their unused domains at an Apache parking service? What? Furthermore, it's not like real people are parking huge numbers of empty domains, it's resellers who are looking to auction off single dictionary words in the .com TLD. Duh.

I park domains .

I own around 70 domains , many of which are parked through Sedo [sedo.co.uk] because many of the domains are for sale . Frankly speaking , parking is one of the most idiotic and pointless services on the internet .
In an ideal world , a person that parks a domain name without stating explicitly why it isn't used but parked(like me) , should get a refund and the domain should be taken away , just in case someone actually wants to use it . This is my honest opinion . I get barely 3$ a month from accidental traffic and clicks and once in a while a domain gets sold to a person , for no less than x500 the price I paid .
The only upside of a parked domain is that it gives even more (usually cheaper) advertising space for merchants , and since parked domain traffic usually comes from people that just type a meaningful domain name ( Old Sites [oldsites.com] for instance )into their Address bar, these are usually very targeted visitors .
But still ,I dont see a reason for OS devs to take any pride in providing the platform for Domain Parking .

Re:I park domains .

In other words, you're a domain squatter. I don't think many people would have much sympathy for you not reaping in a five digit income due to ads on your parked domains.

Let me be the first to say: Who cares?

These are fucking parked domains, as far as anyone is concerned, they can be hosted on MacOS9.

What about OpenSourceDriving?

And the new GNU/Roadrage operating system, and – wait, never mind...

Godaddy fails my hosting prerequisite test

I would like to congratulate godaddy.com on their fantastic new parked domain name "turbocow.com".

In order to test the trustworthyness of a potential new web host for my site I put that domain name in my shopping cart then cancelled the order. The next day I went back and the domain name was parked.

So, congratulation to godaddy on their fantastic new parked domain name and the loss of a potential customer.

This will lose credibility for OSS

This is horribly counterproductive for the open-source movement. Consider how this campaign will appear to the media. All that is certain is that stats for Apache hosting will be artificially high because of this campaign. And moreover, the article presents no hard evidence that MS is carrying out any manipulation themselves.

slashdotsucks.com

is available again...

What?

Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't this a dumb thing to do? "Oh noes! Windows got 5% more market share in the 'not actually hosting a website' demographic!"

I can't help but wonder if, by choosing battles like this one, the OSS community as a whole is doomed to fail against microsoft; an enemy who often establishes victory first, then fights the appropriate battles.

Office Space, anyone?

For some reason I'm reminded by this piece of dialogue from Office Space:

Tom Smykowski: It's a "Jump to Conclusions mat". You see, you have this mat, with different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO.
Michael Bolton: That's the worst idea I've ever heard in my life, Tom.
Samir: Yes, this is horrible, this idea.

It would be free... it could be free

But my domain hoster charges me to change the NS records... of course this may lead to the development of something different altogether.. an opensource and free domain registrar. My current registrar allows me to change everything but the NS records (A,AAA,CNAME,MX) myself at no charge (except the few bucks anually) but of course this service could be provided by a community supported organization, goodness gracious that would put a dent in the usage statistics, Mr Perens! It might stop some of the more irritating aspects of domain parking and that would in itself be a great boon for the internet as a whole. It could work..

Hmm

I guess this calls for affirmative action so we can have true equality between platforms!

I Like It

I have a couple of domains that I registered through GoDaddy that are not currently in use. They defaulted to using GoDaddy's parking scheme but with this announcement I now have a Linux based place to point them to.

Makes sense to me ...

There's a theory going that parked domains are the best use for an IIS server.

If you want to serve actual content, it makes a lot more sense to pick a server that's simple to set up and run, and that isn't subject to all the malware that infects Microsoft products. But if your PHB insists on using IIS, there might be a few things that it's good for.

Ironic

It's ironic that he's registered his domain with Wild West Domains, a Go Daddy reseller.

Re:Another waste of time

Perens has been somewhat active in the past couple of weeks? Has he changed the street corner he gets his fix from? Seriously, Perens is banded around as being this "Open Source Evangelist" - excuse me while I puke in a bucket. Perens only pops on the scene when there is another fanciful idea to line his pockets with cash.

Oh come on, when Perens puts his mind to it, he can accomplish anything! I mean look at his last project Duke Nukem Forever Linux . . .

Oh let's face it, he'll forget about it in a few weeks and move on to the next big thing. . .