| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
[UPDATE 2] CyanogenMOD.com gets pulled from the web, moves to CyanogenMOD.ORG
UPDATE: The accused party has emailed the CyanogenMod team and agreed to relinquish control of the CyanogenMod.com domain. Although he had a much different story than what was initially posted by the CM team, he has decided not to voice his opinion, instead opting to “wash his hands and move on.” via Phandroid
UPDATE 2: Ahmet Deveci (the accused domain owner) posted the following on Google+:
For the record, regarding: cyanogenmod.com
Following the saga from : http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/psa-transition-to-cyanogenmod-org it would appear that I have been labelled a ‘thief’ an ‘extortionist’ a ‘liar’ and a bunch of other somewhat degrading comments.
The domain name has since been transferred to the CM Team, but I wanted to make a few things clear.
I purchased the CyanogenMod.com domain name 3 years ago and have been responsible for the renewal fees ever since. This means I (my company) legally owned the domain name. It was fully registered in the United Kingdom. I hear people saying about ‘trademark’. Yes, CyanogenMod is now a registered trademark in the US. But the domain was registered in the UK well before that trademark. I don’t want to get into any legal battles here, but US trademark’s are not valid in the UK unless they are registered here with the IPO.
The term ‘hi-jacked’ is just wrong, the domain name was always in my control. I didn’t hijack anything. I initiated a transfer out process with my registrar today who restored the DNS entries to their own. This in turn deleted all MX entries and other records. The term ‘hi-jacked’ has just derived from tech blogs creating stories for link bait.
The term ‘extortion’ is also wrong. If I was out for the money, why an earth would I have transferred the domain to the CM Team for free?
I really don’t want to make a meal out of this, nor do I want to get into the rigmarole of having to keep fighting off the haters on here or Twitter or my personal email. I would just simply ask that some people act a little more mature about this whole situation and let’s all move along.
The domain name has now been rightfully transferred to the great guys behind CyanogenMod and I will continue to use the mod on my devices. I will just be stepping down from my previous role as ‘webmaster’.
If I have offended anyone during all of this commotion then I apologise. In the meantime, let’s all move along and play nicely. This incident was blown way out of proportion. There are far more important things in life than to worry about internet disputes.
Thanks again,
Ahmet
Looks like more trouble has arisen in the Android Community. The CyanogenMOD team took to social outlets to get the word out to the community about the happenings and the situation. Letting everyone know that the domain owner of CyanogenMOD.com, who donated the domain to the team and has been running it for the last three years, is in the process of shutting them all down. Going to that page now offers nothing but a domain name.
Hi, so you think by removing all my access across the infrastructure was going to be a great idea? We had a chat yesterday, you’ve decided to end this bitter. How about I just change the DNS entries right now. CM will practically go down.”
Doesn’t look good, but it won’t stop CM. Everything is still good to go on CyanogenMOD.org. So have no fears, just go and update your bookmarks if you weren’t already on there to begin with. For those of you sporting @cyanogenmod.com email address though, consider those discontinued until further notice. The entire store was posted up on the new .org page and can be found below.
We at CM are very trusting of our members, showed by both respect and permissions granted to those people we consider part of the team. Last month, this trust was violated in a substantial way. In the spirit of openness, here is what happened.
CM’s history is well established, with Cyanogen releasing his original ROM for the G1 on XDA forums. Back then, there was no “CyanogenMod” in terms of the organization and structure that we have today. The builds were hosted on Steve’s personal machine, the original server was a donation of spare kit from Phaseburn. And due to the small size (and lack of funds), the CyanogenMod.com domain was bought by a third-party back in 2009 and donated to CM, when CM was a much smaller project and had no online presence besides XDA.
Fast-forward 3 years, we have 3 extremely powerful build boxes donated by the community and an army of developers, contributors, and supported devices. But, a little over a week ago, things took a bad turn. The person owning the CyanogenMod.com domain was caught impersonating Steve to make referral deals with community sites. When confronted and asked to hand over control of the domain amicably, he decided he wanted 10K USD for it, which we won’t (and can’t) pay.
We contacted those he had established deals with, only to discover that the person tasked with maintaining our web presence was setting up deals under the CM name, and impersonating Cyanogen himself. Plenty of satisfying evidence was provided by those sites / entities to make us certain that this wasn’t a misunderstanding or one-time thing.
This leaves us at a critical impasse. Being trusted with CM’s web presence means this member had control over the CM social network accounts (Twitter/FB) as well as domains (cyanogenmod.com). We have changed ownership of the social media accounts. When asked again to make the transition nicely, he responded with the following
“Hi, so you think by removing all my access across the infrastructure was going to be a great idea? We had a chat yesterday, you’ve decided to end this bitter. How about I just change the DNS entries right now. CM will practically go down.”
Refusing to be extorted for funds, and then being threatened is “ending it bitter”? Today, it happened: all of our records were deleted, and cyanogenmod.com is slowly expiring out of the Internet and being replaced by blank pages and non-existing sites. @cyanogenmod.com e-mail is now being directed to a mailserver completely out of our control, too.
We have begun the dispute process with ICANN to reclaim our domain. In the meantime, please utilize CyanogenMod.org and all applicable subdomains.
As mentioned, this member also managed our Google Apps for Business account, and therefore our @cyanogenmod.com email addresses. These addresses should be considered discontinued until further notice. We will be contacting the Google team to reclaim rights to the apps account. In the meantime, please contact [email protected] for any devrel questions or other issues. A mailserver is being established to transition devrel and other support email addresses. We will provide those when they are finalized, and they will utilize the .org domain.
We don’t like how this played out, and we are deeply hurt. Likewise, we are deeply saddened at the confusion this may have caused the community. We will continue to be open about the what, when, how, but unfortunately, we may never know the ‘why’ – though greed comes to mind. The team itself has not made a profit off of CM and that is not our goal. But to have one of our own betray the community like this is beyond our comprehension. We will update you all as things progress.
Know that we are pursuing every available legal means to regain control over our domain.
Please note, all donations that were given directly to Cyanogen (aka [email protected]) did indeed reach their destination and are not affected.
If you are a company out there that believes they have also entered into agreements with “CM” by this person impersonating Steve, please contact [email protected]. We’d like to get a handle on how widespread this was before we file charges.
-The CyanogenMod Team
2012-11-15 03:56:37
Source: http://androidspin.com/2012/11/14/cyanogenmod-com-gets-pulled-from-the-web-moves-to-cyanogenmod-org/
Source:
