Here they think that what is doing Bitvise is legal but I think that it might not be the case in the law of a number of countries and even possibly in domain names "regulation"?
This is parasitism, or deceptive practice to hold the domain name of a competitor claiming your are to be associated with the other project.
> “The difference is not one of profit, it is one of philosophy. You believe software can be managed by a committee. I believe software requires an owner, otherwise it is dead.”
This justification is even worse than the domain squatting itself.
Some of the most influential software in history (Linux, Git, GCC, and yes, PuTTY) thrived under community-driven development. The idea that software "dies" without a single corporate owner is not just false, it’s insulting to the open-source ecosystem.
If Bitvise truly believes in their philosophy, they wouldn’t need to borrow PuTTY’s reputation by holding putty.org. Maybe they should spend less time on branding and more time studying how successful open-source projects actually work.
I don't think Bitvise is even doing anything wrong here? There's nothing wrong with running what is essentially a fan site and promoting your own things on it.
both sides are at fault here (the "journalist" and Bitvise - the PuTTY maintainers have nothing to do with this).
the Bitvise owner shouldn't have responded so unprofessionally, and their views on open source software are strange - but they're correct that the domain was never "historically associated with PuTTY", it just uses its name.
additionally, the usage of unformatted markdown in each "journalist" email makes me think this story was at least partially assisted by an LLM
(https://putty.org/20250713-MiraiF-Emails.txt)
> The domain, long associated by users with PuTTY [...] a domain name that clearly and historically signals the PuTTY project
This seems a bit misleading. The domain has never, as far as I know, belonged to the project, so it can only have been "long associated" in the minds of users mistakenly trying to guess the URL and "historically" navigating to the wrong website.
> “The PuTTY project never had this domain”
Right.
> Search engines treat domain names like putty.org as authoritative.
Do they? Domain names "like" putty.org in what sense? Which search engines, by what mechanism?
Look, I understand. Excess of information leads people to start skimming all text. But look:
"Below suggestions are independent of PuTTY. They are not endorsements by the PuTTY project."
Above of this is a direct link to PuTTY's website.
I'm afraid this is a non-issue. Sure, you are free to rant, and I appreciate the good intentions behind it, but count me out on raging.
www.putty.org SHOULD be the correct address. Failing that, LINKING to the correct website is an acceptable measure, specially when such linking is on top.
Want to blame someone? Blame SEO, where a decent 2000 website with no issues whatsoever is pushed down the results.
Has the putty.org website changed in the few hours since this was posted? I see nothing there about any kind of software at all. It appears to be about someone called Mike Yeadon, and scandals in the pharmaceutical industry. That's not what anyone else here is describing.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 42.9 ms ] threadThis is parasitism, or deceptive practice to hold the domain name of a competitor claiming your are to be associated with the other project.
It's best to just ignore them instead of trying to play their games.
This justification is even worse than the domain squatting itself.
Some of the most influential software in history (Linux, Git, GCC, and yes, PuTTY) thrived under community-driven development. The idea that software "dies" without a single corporate owner is not just false, it’s insulting to the open-source ecosystem.
If Bitvise truly believes in their philosophy, they wouldn’t need to borrow PuTTY’s reputation by holding putty.org. Maybe they should spend less time on branding and more time studying how successful open-source projects actually work.
This has never changed.
Just because someone likes to use short circuit routing in their head doesn't make putty.org the official site for putty.
That is the same attitude as telling the Keepass folks that https://keepass.info/ is wrong...
edit:
Maybe also have a look at the putty FAQ, especially 9.3
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#...
the Bitvise owner shouldn't have responded so unprofessionally, and their views on open source software are strange - but they're correct that the domain was never "historically associated with PuTTY", it just uses its name.
additionally, the usage of unformatted markdown in each "journalist" email makes me think this story was at least partially assisted by an LLM (https://putty.org/20250713-MiraiF-Emails.txt)
in short this is a nothing story
This seems a bit misleading. The domain has never, as far as I know, belonged to the project, so it can only have been "long associated" in the minds of users mistakenly trying to guess the URL and "historically" navigating to the wrong website.
> “The PuTTY project never had this domain”
Right.
> Search engines treat domain names like putty.org as authoritative.
Do they? Domain names "like" putty.org in what sense? Which search engines, by what mechanism?
"Below suggestions are independent of PuTTY. They are not endorsements by the PuTTY project."
Above of this is a direct link to PuTTY's website.
I'm afraid this is a non-issue. Sure, you are free to rant, and I appreciate the good intentions behind it, but count me out on raging.
www.putty.org SHOULD be the correct address. Failing that, LINKING to the correct website is an acceptable measure, specially when such linking is on top.
Want to blame someone? Blame SEO, where a decent 2000 website with no issues whatsoever is pushed down the results.