On the ownership of TakChess

[mvanthoor]

As I see it, the only thing that needs a blessing is if we would permanently want to move the forum to another host. Which, to succeed, would obviously require Chess U.S.A.'s permission, as they would have to be willing to transfer registration of the talkchess.com domain to 'us'. (Or they might want to keep it, and just assign it to the I.P. of a new server.)

Why not some sort of a compromise:

"We" (the community) set up the forum on a different server, with ChessUSA keeping the Talkchess.com domain name, and paying for the hosting. In return, we replace "Hosted by Your Move Chess & Games - chessusa.com" by a more noticable linked sponsor banner at the top; replace the entire PHPBB-logo for all I care.

A "server" for this forum could just be a shared hosting account. We have a few hundred active members, with some logged in at the same time; I assume that can be handled easily by most shared webhosts. I've installed and helped admin forums on photography and role playing games (also using phpBB) that were bigger than Talkchess, which ran fine on shared hosting 15 years ago.

And, assuming "the forum" (or more accurately, the database) is indeed the property of the computer chess community, it could even be put in the public domain, with backups of the database being hosted for download somewhere. (Free Google account, for example.) But, I know, we could end up with 20 TalkChess "forks", which wouldn't be that nice. (There are other chess programming forums, such as OpenChess, but compared to Talkchess, they are barely active. Outskirts seems extremely active, but seems to be about engine releases mostly.)

[MikeB]

fwiw, I now own the domain name "talkchess.net" if anyone is interested ...not looking to profit, just willing to help to get things moving..

[mclane]

My opinion is splitted.

I am with HGM :
As far as I see it, we would be better by moving somewhere else. We can thank the old host by setting a link above the new forum, as it is NOW.

On the other hand, and here I am with Ed
That we would have to make sure the forum cannot ever be hijacked again by people who go on top of the hierarchy as
Admin, moderator and member/poster ALL IN ONE PERSON.

Sorry but we HAD this hijacking before and much of the damage and controversy we had here was based on THAT situation.

So I understand that Ed is concerned that HGM could misuse the situation.

We fought many battles here and this was all about hierarchy and the power and the question who decides about bans and alias names and maintenance of forum.
If there would have been a clear rule how to stop somebody to exploit the power, or if the participants in general would have recognized the problem of the concentration of power in one person alone, all these problems would not have occured.

[hgm]

I think you misunderstand Ed's concern. The TalkChess clone is on a machine to which Ed has root access. So he controls it as much as I do. Ed is not concerned that I would run the show, he is concerned that Quentin would no longer run the show. BTW, Quentin could have root permission to that server too; there is nothing sinister going on. But Quentin is not a programmer, so he would not know what to do with it anyway.

[Rebel]

My opinion is splitted.

I am with HGM :
As far as I see it, we would be better by moving somewhere else. We can thank the old host by setting a link above the new forum, as it is NOW.

We would indeed. Nothing has changed. It's up to HGM to make a deal with Quentin. As it should, as it was agreed.

[Rebel]

I think you misunderstand Ed's concern. The TalkChess clone is on a machine to which Ed has root access. So he controls it as much as I do. Ed is not concerned that I would run the show, he is concerned that Quentin would no longer run the show. BTW, Quentin could have root permission to that server too; there is nothing sinister going on. But Quentin is not a programmer, so he would not know what to do with it anyway.

FALSE guess.

[hgm]

As I see it, the only thing that needs a blessing is if we would permanently want to move the forum to another host. Which, to succeed, would obviously require Chess U.S.A.'s permission, as they would have to be willing to transfer registration of the talkchess.com domain to 'us'. (Or they might want to keep it, and just assign it to the I.P. of a new server.)

Why not some sort of a compromise:

"We" (the community) set up the forum on a different server, with ChessUSA keeping the Talkchess.com domain name, and paying for the hosting. In return, we replace "Hosted by Your Move Chess & Games - chessusa.com" by a more noticable linked sponsor banner at the top; replace the entire PHPBB-logo for all I care.

A "server" for this forum could just be a shared hosting account. We have a few hundred active members, with some logged in at the same time; I assume that can be handled easily by most shared webhosts. I've installed and helped admin forums on photography and role playing games (also using phpBB) that were bigger than Talkchess, which ran fine on shared hosting 15 years ago.

And, assuming "the forum" (or more accurately, the database) is indeed the property of the computer chess community, it could even be put in the public domain, with backups of the database being hosted for download somewhere. (Free Google account, for example.) But, I know, we could end up with 20 TalkChess "forks", which wouldn't be that nice. (There are other chess programming forums, such as OpenChess, but compared to Talkchess, they are barely active. Outskirts seems extremely active, but seems to be about engine releases mostly.)

Shared hosting is basically what ChessUSA is doing now, sharing TalkChess with their commercial website. And this is apparently not satisfactory: malicious hacker attacks on TalkChess bring the commercial server to a halt. We don't want to have that kind of trouble. Your estimate of the server load caused by TalkChess is based on normal use, not on malicious overloading.

Your public domain idea is not viable; the copyright of the forum resides with the original posters, and the only license they have given for its use is to store it in a database that will not be shared with any third party.

[hgm]

I think you misunderstand Ed's concern. The TalkChess clone is on a machine to which Ed has root access. So he controls it as much as I do. Ed is not concerned that I would run the show, he is concerned that Quentin would no longer run the show. BTW, Quentin could have root permission to that server too; there is nothing sinister going on. But Quentin is not a programmer, so he would not know what to do with it anyway.

FALSE guess.

So you say. But your actions are all directed towards protecting Quentin's control on the forum. And, as they say, actions speak louder than words. So no, it is not a guess. It is just a description of the way you behave.

Not that I want to imply there is anything wrong with that. As I said, I wasn't around at the time of inception. I just want to resolve the apparent discrepancy between what Chris claims (ChessUSA is just a host) and the way you behave and argue (fighting of any perceived threat to ChessUSA's exclusive control of the forum). If there is that much disagreement between founding members, nothing will ever get resolved.

Of course, when you would simply declare yourself, rather than 'beating around the bush', no one would ever have to guess or make deductions. But taking a clear stance doesn't really seem to be your cup of tea.

[Rebel]

I think you misunderstand Ed's concern. The TalkChess clone is on a machine to which Ed has root access. So he controls it as much as I do. Ed is not concerned that I would run the show, he is concerned that Quentin would no longer run the show. BTW, Quentin could have root permission to that server too; there is nothing sinister going on. But Quentin is not a programmer, so he would not know what to do with it anyway.

FALSE guess.

So you say. But your actions are all directed towards protecting Quentin's control on the forum. And, as they say, actions speak louder than words. So no, it is not a guess. It is just a description of the way you behave.

Not that I want to imply there is anything wrong with that. As I said, I wasn't around at the time of inception. I just want to resolve the apparent discrepancy between what Chris claims (ChessUSA is just a host) and the way you behave and argue (fighting of any perceived threat to ChessUSA's exclusive control of the forum). If there is that much disagreement between founding members, nothing will ever get resolved.

Of course, when you would simply declare yourself, rather than 'beating around the bush', no one would ever have to guess or make deductions. But taking a clear stance doesn't really seem to be your cup of tea.

By your own words -

I'm a bit surprised by your comment. I wasn't aware that Quentin had any right to the forum. It was nice of him at the time to offer to host it. (Although it's not clear to me if that actually cost him anything.) But in the past year, as far as I'm concerned, he's delivered a tremendous failure. It's crazy that we had to struggle for weeks to finally get access to our own database; he obviously didn't even read most of the messages we sent him. As far as I'm concerned, we're better off without him, and if he feels that his interests are being harmed, then that's just bad luck for him. He should have done better. He will soon be able to transfer the domain name talkchess.com to us, so that we can link it to our new server, once it works perfectly. In short, if Quentin doesn't do what we ask of him properly, isn't he the one who finds himself in a legally precarious situation?

Indeed, it took an earthquake before he trusted me enough to give me access to the Talkchess server. And for that I had to make a promise, see the forwarded email to you on August 31 in the time line. And that's the only thing I have been doing, keeping the promise. I am not in Quentin's camp or other of your fantasies. I don't want to be partly guilty on your hijack attempt. I regret I gave you access.

[hgm]

So you can confirm Chris and Thorsten's account of things, that the forum is owned by the members, and that the deal with ChessUSA was that they can host it only as long as the members are satisfied with this arrangement and don't decide to seek other hosting? (Simple question; Yes/No can suffice...)

BTW, the funny thing is that I never needed the ftp access to clone the forum elsewhere (it being based on public software obtainable anywhere), but that I would only need it to move the repaired version back.