Control of coin3d.org?

[kkremitzki]

I seem to recall this site used to work, but it doesn't seem to be working anymore. Who controls this resource? Can we fix it and e.g. have it point at coin3d.github.io? It's a nice, authoritative sounding domain, so keeping it in hand seems like it would be useful...

[veelo]

According to https://dnslytics.com/domain/coin3d.org, Kongsberg Digital is still the registrant organization. I assumed they had terminated that domain, apparently they didn't. I also think it was pointing to https://coin3d.bitbucket.io/ for a long time. It points to an unresponsive IP at the moment.

I have contacted their communications department and asked if they can redirect the domain.

[kkremitzki]

Thank you for contacting them, I am interested to see if there is a response. If we hear back, do you think it would make sense to also ask them about giving up maintenance & ownership of the domain to the community?

I am not sure on exactly what basis the request would be made, though, you know, "as the GitHub coin3d organization"? Might be too informal, is there a better alternative?

If nobody knows of one, I can reference a similar situation going on with FreeCAD. We recently gained control of the freecad.org domain, but it is being held for us for now through KiCad which in turn is a Linux Foundation project. If help is needed, passing a request along that chain is sure to find someone who can take care of things.

[VolkerEnderlein]

@veelo Any news on this issue?

[veelo]

I am sorry to say that I got zero response.

For reference, this is what I wrote to their VP Communications & Marketing (in Norwegian):

Hei Mathilde Vik Magnussen,

Som du kanskje vet har Coin3D blitt utviklet av Systems in Motion, som ble kjøpt opp av Kongsberg Oil & Gas. I 2011 bestemte Kongsberg å overdra vedlikeholdet av Coin3D til frivillige, som jeg er en av. Den gamle hjemmesiden ble stengt ned, og trafikken ble ledet videre til det nye hjemmet på Bitbucket. Siden et par år nå har vi flyttet fra Bitbucket til Github: https://coin3d.github.io/. Det legges jevnlig arbeid i å øke kvaliteten til Coin3D sine biblioteker: https://github.com/coin3d.

Som jeg ser fra https://dnslytics.com/domain/coin3d.org, er det fremdeles Kongsberg Digital som står som registrant organization for domenet coin3d.org. Den peker til et ikke responsivt IP 88.87.56.168. www.coin3d.org viser bare urelaterte alternativer som er heller uheldig.

Det har nylig kommet inn etterspørsel (#466) om coin3d.org domenet kan oppdateres til å lede til https://coin3d.github.io. Er dette noe du kan hjelpe oss med?

Med vennlig hilsen,

Bastiaan Veelo
Trondheim

I have just resubmitted the message through the web form on their contact page, let's hope it triggers a reaction.

[VolkerEnderlein]

Sad, that there was no reaction. Maybe former Kongsberg employees like @kintel or @tuhtah still have connections to management and can support our issue.

[tuhtah]

Happy New Year to you all! 🎆 Really wonderful to see that Coin development is still going strong! 👍

Thanks for reaching out @VolkerEnderlein! I think this should be possible to get fixed. I will reach out to my former colleagues at SIM and see what we can do here.

[kkremitzki]

That would be excellent, thank you Tamer!

[thammer]

Sorry about this. Didn't know about the problem until now. Let me see what I can do.

[luzpaz]

Hi, just checking if there is any progress on this ticket?

[thammer]

The DNS for coin3d.org now resolves to coin3d.github.io. I think what's missing is that you configure the settings on your end (github) to respond to requests to this domain name.

Alternatively, I can do a plain old www forwarding, if that's better for you.

[VolkerEnderlein]

Many thanks @thammer ! I just enabled Github's custom domain setting and HTTPS and the transition went smooth. Now the docs and the site can be reached under the well known address www.coin3d.org.

[VolkerEnderlein]

@thammer Do you think we could forward emails sent to coin-support@coin3d.org as well to one of the major maintainers (@WizzerWorks or @veelo)?

[veelo]

Now the docs and the site can be reached under the well known address www.coin3d.org.

This is great!

forward emails sent to coin-support@coin3d.org as well to one of the major maintainers

I am not in favour of sending these to any individual. A better alternative would be https://groups.google.com/g/coin3d-discuss but currently only group members can post, so that won't work. Maybe even better would be to enable Github Discussions (in the repository settings) which is a github-integrated alternative to google groups, to have everything under one roof. But that doesn't seem to have an e-mail interface, so a simple forward would not work.

Maybe an auto-reply would be the best option, informing to use [whichever forum we decide to use].

[VolkerEnderlein]

@veelo I enabled the Github Discussions feature for the coin3d organization. As you already mentioned it has no email interface. But there is a additional Github app called fire-bot that promises to fill this gap. It helps to create issues in a repository via an email interface. Can you have a look onto this?

[veelo]

@thammer GitHub sent me a message requesting to add a verification TXT record to the DNS configuration, with a challenge and a specific key. They say if the domain remains unverified, other users can freely publish GitHub Pages sites on that domain. If you could help us with that again, that would be much appreciated.

Rather than pasting the information in this public channel, it would be best if we could communicate that privately. I can leave my e-mail address here if you want or you can find my phone number in any of the Norwegian public registries, there is no one else with my name.

Thanks!