What should be done with the domain, dlang.org?

[Oscar Brynolf]

Good Evening!


My name is Oscar Brynolf. I'm a swedish web/gfx designer and hobby D user living in Berlin. I'm the owner of the domain dlang.org.


--- Background ---
I was casually browsing domains for D about a year or two ago, as I found (and still do find) d-programming-language.org to be a cumbersome and spam-like domain. I was stunned to find that dlang.org was free! I just regged it on the spot, as a reflex, with the intent of donating it to D or whatever. My experience is you don't even blink on a 5-char keyword-class domain. Better me, a D fan, than some troll, I reasoned. Then I did some research and found this post: http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D.announce&artnum=3744 , and I realized it had already been disqualified. Ouch. Oh well, maybe I can make my own D website then? Could be a fun project. Did some sketches, wrote some crap code, the summer went, reality kicked in, no website. I'm sure you've at least heard of the pattern.

Then I read another post here in the NG not too long ago about the confusing number of D websites around, and it hit me that, yeah, it's awfully confusing for dlang.org to be used for a separate unofficial D-related website, especially as it's more or less the canonical domain name if you have a programming language called "D", like golang.org for "Go". It's the sort of domain people try without even googling first. It's the sort of domain you can use in Twitter posts as-is. It's the sort of... yeah. I mean if it was just used for spam it wouldn't be confusing, just annoying, but if it's actually used for a D-related website, it is confusing and it undermines the authority of the official website. So I came up with a quick fix and just CNAME:d it to d-programming-language.org, and it worked! and that was that.

Now, when I'm revisiting this ordeal again, I'm suddenly seeing that this domain aliasing could potentially be regarded as some sort of sneaky attack or something, and that it also makes things complicated for the website maintainers. I considered it fair game back then, as the admin of that server could block the domain at any time, and D seemed pretty ambivalent about its websites anyway. Still, it's not very, erh, professional, to just alias a domain to another, without asking. I must admit that. And D seems a lot more serious about its web these days, so I'm trying to do the right thing, at last. Sorry it took a while. Hence:


--- TL;DR ---
Dear and esteemed D community,

What should be done with the domain, dlang.org?
How would you like to see it used?

Just keep it CNAME:d to d-programming-language.org as it is now?
Or make it redirect, like d-p-l.org ?
Or should it be a separate website? What kind of website?
Something else? Ideas? Thoughts?

Personally, I think it should be the official domain. I think it's superior in every way to d-programming-langauge.org.

Also, should the ownership be transferred?

(I'm ready to transfer it for free, under the right circumstances, to the right person, no problem. I don't own it for profit in any way. My only wish is that it's used as a real domain for something D-related. I'm quite stubborn about this. If it's going to be used as just a redirect, I'm afraid I believe I have better uses for it, albeit arbitrarily far into the future.)

In either case, perhaps the most important part is that you know who I am and that I'm here and that I can be reasoned with. I don't always read this NG. Feel free to send me emails to oscar dot brynolf at gmail dot com. I'll at least try to follow this thread closely.


Kind regards
/Oscar