thanks for putty

it is essential software literally everywhere I've been

🤩

@saxnot yes, with hindsight it was a mistake not to grab putty.org at the earliest opportunity, before some other opportunist did. But then PuTTY never *aimed* to become widely known. Its fame grew gradually by word of mouth, so it was never quite clear when it would be a good idea to get the most obvious domain – until it was too late.

The chiark URL is of a type that was very common in the 90s, especially for software published by someone who didn't yet know whether it would have more than a dozen users – which was exactly the situation when I started!

I think you should absolutely lawyer up and file a WIPO Domain Name Dispute Resolution complaint. https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/

"When your brand is misused to deceive consumers online (also known as “cybersquatting”), WIPO – the global leader in domain name dispute resolution – can help you reclaim the infringing domain name using an online enforcement tool called the UDRP or a national “ccTLD” variant."

Domain Name Disputes

Avoid court proceedings by using the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center's domain name dispute resolution services.

^www.wipo.int

even before Github was owned by MS, I didn't like the look of it.

Partly because it's not itself free software: unlike Gitlab, if you want to export your project with all its metadata like the bug database, you can't make a compatible instance to move it to. If you can see the vendor lock-in coming _before_ you're already committed, avoid it.

And partly _because_ it was trying so hard to make itself the One True Place. There shouldn't _be_ a One True Place. As soon as there is, someone can buy it out and monetise / enshittify / generally do bad things with it.

I'd rather contribute to the Internet being distributed, than contribute to it being centralised. That's why I'm on Mastodon and was never on the birdsite, and it's why I don't use Github (except for sending patches to projects that are already hosted there).

The internet in particular, and the worldwide adoption of new technology in general, are well broken at this point. Yours is a perfect example of this.

Perhaps we need a TLD where you don't even have to apply for a name: you become automatically associated with an address by implication, and become free to use it as needed.

There are a huge number of imitators (mostly malicious) of popular piracy site "fitgirl", and likewise everything you get from there has the right URL plastered over it in all possible places.

Clearly you should agree with her that she'll mention the PuTTY URL and you'll tell people where to yarr games.

I'm assuming this site also isn't you folks?

https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.83/

I've found them because they provide versions for older versions of Windows, but wasn't sure if it was related, because of the username.

The TLD .org once had rules that would have prevented this.

Now a local butcher has a .org address for his shop. 🙁

This seems like a self inflicted issue. And it seriously points to the project and it's leaders in poor decision making. Especially after what, 26 years?

Not sure why you are even bothering with this at this point as it appears you will ignore all the sound advice of the community.

It should be absolutely no surprise to anybody that <keyword>.tld ranks higher than some extremely deep URL nobody can remember.

I'd suggest buying putty.something and moving the website there instead, that should fix the problem.

Well... PuTTY more or less belongs on the "WHO Essential Medicines List" for (windows) computing now...

@simontatham @saxnot

It's partly due to stuff like these:

https://superuser.com/a/1176834/38062

https://superuser.com/a/484804/38062

https://stackoverflow.com/a/31137173/340790

https://stackoverflow.com/a/33270560/340790

https://stackoverflow.com/a/57087567/340790

That's just some of the results from the 2 StackExchange sites that I checked. There are several other StackExchanges which are ripe candidates for people hyperlinking (or mentioning) putty.org and StackExchange does tend to carry weight with search engines.

#PuTTY #StackExchange

@helioloureiroBR with all due respect, I never understood why don’t you just register something like puttyterminal.net and go with it, it would quickly surpass the bogus website on search engines

If a tutorial tells a user to download Putty and they google it, they will for sure think the official URL is a scam.

"On July 13, 2025, Bitvise was contacted by a political interrogator posing as a journalist."

then links to an exchange for asking the domain to be transferred to the actual authorts of putty

lmao

and them there is

https://puttygen.com/download-putty

stated in wikipedia
https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PuTTY

free and open-source terminal emulator, serial console and network file transfer application

^{Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)}

Does this make the situation any clearer? https://putty.org/20250713-MiraiF-Emails.txt

As putty hasn't died, it must have "become controlled by large corporations and political entities."

Something similar happened when a predator falsely registered Linux as a service mark, was sued and had to give it back. Resulted in formation of the Linux Foundation. Misleading use of your established service mark, registered or not, is an IP infringement.

If Putty isn't a profit centre for you, I suggest you contact Clifford Chance to give them an opportunity to sharpen the teeth of a young lawyer doing pro bono work, for which they have a useful budget. They did some pro bono work for my community initiative service mark (LETSystem Trust) a while back.

https://www.cliffordchance.com/about_us/responsible-business/community-and-pro-bono/community-and-pro-bono-team.html

Community & pro bono team

Meet our global Community & pro bono team

^{Clifford Chance}

@AmarettoBear Zigbee and ZWave are open standard local device wireless mesh standards. You can create a local smart home with locally controlled and managed devices and you can also easily switch from controller to controller or even use multiple controllers. You can perform operations based on local sensors, time of day/day, etc.

While dependence on a company that may or may not be around long term is iffy, using a hub, like Hubitat or Home Assistant which both use open standards and have their own low cost models, gives you flexibility and a way not just to have secure cloud access to your home devices, but the ability to integrate other cloud services as you choose. Even if those cloud services go away, you will always retain control over devices in your local mesh network.

In other words, not all smart devices are the same. Ones that require cloud functionality to work may not work forever. Local devices, barring something unseen and catastrophic, will.

@AmarettoBear Yup. Your home devices can be 100% locally controlled.

I’m even working on using home assistant with a locally hosted, non-Internet connected LLM to handle local voice requests without needing an Internet-based third party like Google or Amazon.

Somebody once said "Spending hours fretting about whether you're ____ is a pretty good indication" x3

Fill in the blank with your own awesomeness, and don't be afraid to own who you are!

Weighing in on the bisexual/pansexual front to say, yes, all of y'all, too! It's okay if you prefer one gender, it's okay if you have only yet dreamt about straying from heteronormativity (or homonormativity for that matter!), it's fine if you don't really get what's going with you, you just know it's weird and complex. You're bi/pan/queer enough.

No one does bisexual/pansexual erasure like bisexuals/pansexuals 😅 ... We're the most self doubting group out there!

just weighing in with an alternative that worked for and helped me.

If you’re not sure about yourself, or you’re still questioning and exploring your identity, or you feel like ‘committing’ to a label is a big insurmountable obstacle… okay — don’t give it a label!

I’ve known I don’t fit the cishet template for over a decade, but for a wide variety of reasons I’ve never felt comfortable with most labels.

The only label I give myself is “queer”, and I’m actually more comfortable with that. It doesn’t feel like I have to explain myself to everyone, there’s no internalised pressure about “changing” my labels as my life and identity and preferences develop, and it covers all bases.

If more precise labels help you to work out who you are and express yourself and to feel comfortable and seen, use them! Explore them! Change them! But if they don’t? If it doesn’t work for you? Okay — just be queer, or something else nebulous and fitting. You don’t owe people your whole identity, especially if you’re not sure what it is yet! Just go with an umbrella word that lets you explore or understand yourself internally ^w^