The domain name putty.org is *NOT* run by the #PuTTY developers. It is run by somebody not associated with us, who uses the domain to interpose advertising for their unrelated commercial products. We do not endorse those products in any way, and we have never given any kind of agreement for PuTTY's name to be used in promoting them.
Please do not perpetuate the claim that putty.org is the PuTTY website. If anyone is linking to it on that basis, please change the link. The PuTTY website is https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ and it always has been.
You can check this by downloading the source code, which cites that URL in many places (the README, the documentation, some strings in the actual code), or by using the "Visit Web Site" menu options in the official Windows binaries (the ones signed with my personal Authenticode certificate). The true PuTTY website is the one that PuTTY itself says it is.
Many search engines list putty.org above chiark. I don't know if this is due to active SEO on the part of the domain owner, or a heuristic in the rankings. Either way, don't believe them. It's not our site.
@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!
"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."
Typically if brand name is registered after domain, there is no chance getting a domain other than buying it from owner. Unless you can prove your unregistered trade mark is well known and that current domain owner is referencing to your brand and not some similar.
In short, always register domain and then registered trade mark/name afterwards before getting your brand public
@gytisrepecka @farbenstau in this case it does seem pretty clear that the current domain owner is referring to the same PuTTY I am, and isn't talking about some unrelated thing with the same name!
@Sobex @ArneBab@rollenspiel.social I'd like nothing better, but I think I'd have to _start_ with a lawyer, just to get any idea at all of where to begin. I did try contacting one once, but they never replied to my query.
For example, I have no idea whether it _is_ the right strategy to start by registering the trademark, or how to do that, or even which country to do it in. (I'm guessing the USA, because it's .org and not .org.[country] – but _I'm_ not in the USA, so can I register a trademark there at all?)
@Sobex You absolutely can. There are online services that will facilitate this for you, though the process takes a long time (up to a year). I’ve used tramatm.com in the past.
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).
@alexanderdyas @saxnot GitHub is headed in the direction of untrustworthy. And they're ultimately owned by the same party that owns the deceptive putty.org... 🤦
@saxnot Have you thought about hosting it on Github, with the executables as releases? This is where I'm tending to go these days for trusted downloads.
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.
This makes it blatantly obvious that the software distribution model for Windows is fundamentally broken. In what world is it acceptable that the user is expected to access arbitrary websites, shady URL or not. Navigate through a sea of different download buttons and links, where the majority of them will give you spyware. Then run an installer where you have to make sure to deselect another set of spyware. And this is supposed to be the most used OS in the world.
Regarding the search engine rankings: The possible reason for putty.org ranking higher than the official URL, is likely (at least in part) due to people tending to prefer to click on domains that directly match the name of a software project rather than on a weird subdomain/directory host. Search engines might also intentionally derank websites hosted on a long chain of subdomains for being "spammy". Of course, that issue wasn't really a concern in the 90's, so not a fault of you.
@saxnot i mean, since putty *is* more than 1 tool (telnet, ssh, key conversion i think? havent used it in a while), wouldn't putty.tools work? it's not taken as of writing this
@nixCraft I wish I did. It was an internal corporate email at my work warning specifically about putty and winscp fakers. They said like you did, the top SEO fake results. Except they said it was specifically malware, not advert junk
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.
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.
@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.
Is there some way to contest their ownership of the .org domain itself, with the registry? It sounds like they aren't an "org" in the way that registration would require.
I'm baffled to see that they have a link at the bottom of their page to an email exchange with someone asking questions about the situation, because it makes it even clearer that the website owner is in the wrong
thank you for PuTTY! I thankfully do not have to run it currently, as I do not *have* to work on any windows machine (and see no reason to run it elsewhere)
putty is well known and reputated enough to not have a website in times new roman under a random home pub website server. That was pretty easy target to scam users. Economical profit with ads is the less of the damage they can do to your project. You are lucky if they are not distributing trojanized copies already. Their website is #1 result in all search engines
For security reasons, PuTTY has replaced the previously provided SSH Secure Shell for Windows as the supported method of remote access. PuTTY is a free… (READ MORE)
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.
to be fair, this reads like an Onion article. How long has PuTTY been around, and been awesome, for it not to have its own actual domain for a few bucks per year?
putty-term.org? putty.org.uk? Just anything other than someone's tilde account on an obscure subdomain!
> Many search engines list putty.org above chiark.
hooray! (And I say that as a long-time fan.) I haven’t used PuTTY for many years (I’ve been on Linux and Mac laptops) but it was an absolute blessing when I did use it.
I just recently got Home Assistant running at home, I've been using Zigbee devices so that I don't have to use app enabled devices. It's clearly not as simple of a solution as the mainstream ones but it's already come in handy.
@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.
@LeoBurr @AmarettoBear That's pretty cool, especially having an offline option where it can be even more secure and there's less likelihood that an unwanted device update might brick something.
@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.
@AmarettoBear I've got Home Assistant running in the same cluster as Tiggi.es. I prefer using Hubitat for Zigbee and Zwave integrations, and I have Home Assistant handle the automations. They work really well together. :)
@LeoBurr @AmarettoBear I have to ask, is any of this within the capabilities of the average person. Assuming that person is a Windows or Mac user that doesn't know particularly much about computers outside how to use programs on them and play games with them? I'm just wondering how feasible this would be for the average person.
@AmarettoBear Yup. The most difficult part is actually installing physical light/fan switches and finding which ones you want, and thinking about sensors, time/days, proximity (your app), etc. as inputs, and switches/smart bulbs, etc. as outputs and how you want the automations to work.
Home Assistant can easily be installed in an older HP Mini system (think Gen 7-8 Intel) with 4-8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD and an Aeotec Z-Stick 7 for ZWave and/or a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus for Zigbee devices.
Though I personally recommend starting out with a hubitat for local devices, and playing with a Home Assistant later. It works with just about everything - Zigbee, ZWave, Matter, etc.
There are communities out there with a wealth of knowledge.
I've done things like integrate with the third party Litter Robot API so that when @hypoidbear 's kitties poop, it reads the status change, and then turns on his laundry room vent for about 5 minutes after the litter robot timer goes off so it's less stinky in there. That's a cloud-enabled smart device's status change enabling the changing of a local device's status for X time.
@LeoBurr @AmarettoBear @hypoidbear As someone that has no experience with any of that it sounds daunting, but I'm guessing the assumption is anyone that has any home automation stuff is just going to know what all of this is and how to use it. So I get ya'.
A reminder that the Online Safety Act won't stop here.
Contrary to the letter I received from my MP today - in which freedom of speech was championed in an albeit-guarded way - other MPs such as Ms. Onwurah are singing a very different song. She has expressed a desire to control "legal but harmful content".
There is a very real possibility that Nigel Farage will be PM and the fascist far-right will govern in the UK in the next 5 years. What does Ms. Onwurah think will happen then, when "misinformation" is redefined as support information for LGBTQ people, abortion guidance and union organisation activity?
METR: "We ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers.
The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't."
"Good morning! I represent the Nicobar and Andaman division of the Indian census bureaux! I am here to conduct this decade's count if you could please direct me to your tribal leader so we can start the formalities. Oh COME now there is no need to stab me like that!"
As India prepares for its first census in over a decade — and its first in the era of drone technology — officials face one of the most daunting challenges...
The UK government is going to test its emergency notification system again in September.
If you have a hidden or secret phone for your safety, make sure you keep it hidden and that it is switched off when this test takes place. Your phone will make siren sounds and vibrate even if it set to silent or Do Not Disturb is turned on.
@mewmew @rachel @christineburns It can notionally be turned off in any version of Android that is modern enough to have the emergency alerts application installed. It will beg and plead with you to not turn it off and I cannot guarantee that it actually does anything.
Knowing how underhand and mendacious the British government is, it would not surprise to find that the setting can be bypassed. We're talking about the same government that has hacked security vendors and hardware manufacturers to ensure it can get into things and manipulate settings.
It will gradually be abused for more and more ridiculous things.
It just serves to make me anxious. If I'm going to die, I don't need to be told about it via push notification. I will probably notice some other indication.
You don't see globes so much these days. Now that we access most information through screens, we just get 2D maps, so our view of the world is heavily influenced by the Mercator projection. Countries at significant lattitudes are smaller than they appear.
Looks like it's that time of year when some good prepaid data SIM deals crop up. 25GB/month until March 2027 for £25. Handy as a WAN backup for 80p a month.
Sorry, Your Browser Doesn't Support Embedded Videos. Here's the Link to the video FREE Next Business Day Shipping Included :) Data: 25GB per month (refreshed on the 8th of each month) Calls: None Texts: None Roaming: UK Only Speed: 5G as standard …
If you're deeply questioning whether or not you may be able to apply a certain label to yourself... you can, pretty much all of the time.
You think you might be trans? You are.
You think you might be a furry? Join the club!
You think you might be a dragon? Heck yeah, be one with me!!
You think you might be gay? That's a yes.
Embrace labels that help you define who you are. They can sometimes vary in definition, but if you feel it can apply to you, use it! Not only will it help you, it'll help others identify with you and maybe make you some new friends, or help you find people to help guide you along your path of discovery.
Your experiences and life are yours. Feel free to experiment and see what works best for you! You're allowed to change your mind later!
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!
you are telling me I don't need to spend the next five years obsessively picking apart and gatekeeping the labels/identities I'm trying on? cause that sure would save me a lot of heartache.
@coppercrush You really don't need to. You are beautiful and whatever labels you decide are right for you are yours for the taking. Good luck, friend!! I'm cheering for you!!! 💙💙💙💙💙
gets sadly more complicated with labels that seem to be mutually exclusive... am I pan? am I ace? neither? both? what does both even mean? will others understand? do I even understand myself?
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^
Thank you so much for this post. I'm reading it over and over again. It is so inspiring.
It's just: Now I'm wondering if I'm not just a Femboy but maybe an Enby.
I guess cis people don't get a warm feeling every time they get to select the gender neutral name prefix in an online shop registration form or something like that.
Could technology just leave me alone for a bit? Please?
Also, why, Google, did you send this to an email address I didn't use when buying the phone, didn't use when setting it up, but added to the phone only to be able to access some spreadsheets I needed to access a while back? Huh? I have no idea which of zillions of Google things I need to poke to change where these type of emails go.
Get the T-shirts here! :) bigbeaverenergy.comHere is my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/physicsduckYes, I do write books! https://amzn.to/331JrxPIf you like...
Love the way that the media is deliberately ignoring the fact that these bush fires are going from a semi-rare event to a several-times-a-year event just in case anyone uses that opportunity to ask inconvenient questions.
Wildfires continue to burn in the northern Highland Council area of Scotland in the UK, where firefighters have been battling blazes for more than three days...
Conover may not be everyone's cup of tea, but he makes some good points in this video. "AI" is making the people that use it less intelligent, and leading to a loss of critical thinking and basic mental skills. It started with the Smartphone, but it's getting so much worse.
We have the numbers to prove it, AI is turning our brains into AI slop. Visit https://groundnews.com/factually to stay fully informed, see through biased med...
Oh, grrrr. When I moved into this house last year I noted the Swish Fibre toby box in the pavement outside, and found via their web site that I could get symmetric gigabit over fibre. I set up an Openreach fibre line to get started with, using my own reseller account, intending to get Swish installed later. I also asked Swish whether they could do a point-to-point connection, like a leased line, and the clueless customer service people didn't have a bloody clue what that was.
But I still intended to get a line from them, which would be independent of Openreach, and hopefully would give me the same resilient connectivity I was used to at the old house, where we had a VDSL over Openreach and DOCSIS from Virgin Media (plus my own OSPF-over-tunnels setup to my colo network routers in the datacentre to make switchovers seamless).
But I've just gone to look at Swish again and it now seems they've merged with other altnets and apparently stopped providing connections over their own network in preference for just reselling Openreach - if I search for my address they just return the same asymmetric offerings you'd get from any Openreach-based ISP and claim they can get me connected without an engineer visit, which can only be the case if they're using Openreach. Just... why!? Why build your own fibre network and then throw it away? Why buy a company with its own network just to not use that network? Do I really have to order a full leased line just to get a second (wired) net connection at this property? Grrrrrrr.
Looking around for leased line quotes (which are hard to get without having to submit a quote request and give them your phone number and email address so you can be on their pestering list forevermore), the cheapest look like nearly £300/month. That'll be not including VAT, either. Urgh.
Three friends on the beach spotted a log by the shore. The red panda climbed on top to keep watch. Below, the golden retriever and the bunny put on their masks and took a deep breath. *Splash!* they jumped in.
Down in the water, everything was different. It was deeper than what they could imagine, the rocks looked like caves, and they found a chest full of treasures. All this while they were just on the shore, barely splashing their paws on the water, but for sure imagination is better when you share it with others.
Traditional. Watercolor and gouaches. 30.5 x 45.5 cm (12 x 18 inches) Made for Anthrocon 2025. The original will be shown at the Art Show.
Also on Patreon and Ko-Fi you can see high resolutions of the scan of this piece, the high resolution of that video, high resolution of pieces I've been sharing on galleries and also some I haven't shared yet. Plus WIPs and more exclusive content. And you support me to keep creating art. The full of this piece was shared on May 5th on Patreon, so subscribers got to see this picture almost two months before anyone else. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pandapaco Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/panda_paco Thank you!
Oh nice. If I was still in London I might give cycling across it a go again. It's been a few years since I cycled from south-west London to the Docklands to do a datacentre visit. (Sadly it left me with too little remaining energy to actually work effectively, but anyway.) But now that I live in the middle of nowhere, cycling in London isn't really something I can do any more. (I could cycle in my local area, and my brother-in-law keeps hinting, heavily, that I should, but urgh. I don't know the area's cycle routes yet and I just don't feel like cycling these days. And mainly, I don't have anywhere I need to go that's actually a reasonable cycling distance from here.)
Cycling in London has changed my life in more ways than I could have imagined. I really hope you like this one. It's been a passion project of mine to show j...
I'm fed up with being tired all summer. I know it partly comes of going to bed late, but the rest of the year that's not a problem and it's what I'm used to. In summer I have the choice of either sleeping with the window open and being woken up at 5am by traffic noise, or keeping it closed and roasting all night. Opening the curtains (in the old house) or blind (in the new one) adds cooling potential, but also wakes me up after too few hours of sleep with the early-morning blast of daylight. And I hate insects coming in, too (that can be fixed with flyscreens, though).
I just took the car round to the nearby service centre for its service tomorrow. I should have picked up some gloves before I went because the steering wheel was so hot it was hard to keep hold of it. Thank god the car has aircon, even though I only had the benefit of it for a few minutes.
Why does the weather forecast say that this evening will be "fine" when it's absolutely not fine for it to be roasting hot? Roll on Wednesday, when it's meant to be several degrees cooler.
I cannot function properly in this kind of weather. It's outside my specified environmental operating parameters.
I'm not sure there's a good solution to this. I'm the opposite, I go to bed early and get up early, I've drifted that way because of insomnia more than anything, and I have exactly the same problem every year.
I did get a portable ACU about five years back too. I've done as much as I can with that, with ducting through the bedroom wall for the exhaust, and it's far from ideal. It's a lot louder than expected, and the flow of air seems to disrupt my sleep. Despite being one of the more decent ones from the time, I can't position the air outlet such that it doesn't bother me for some reason.
I'm already considering a split system, but don't know if this is just throwing good money after bad.
Anyway, enough moaning from me, and I do hope you manage through this difficult period. You are at least not alone, though I know that doesn't help at all.
No, Windows, how about *you* restart it? That's something a computer can very easily do, and I shouldn't have to be bothered about. Also, please tell me why my computer should be running a "threat service". Hopefully it's just badly named and is actually an anti-threat service. …Unless it's a service running on Microsoft's behalf whose job is to threaten me if I don't allow upgrades when they want me to. 🤷
I really ought to stop running Windows on this laptop. I never meant to, just didn't get round to replacing it with something better when I bought it back in 2018, then came to rely on, so the window of opportunity to wipe and reinstall is gone.
You know, the crazy thing is "threat service" from Microsoft I could totally see going either way.
For the last few years, the first thing I do with a PC laptop when I get it is to specifically remove Windows if it's installed. But I have the good fortune of being in a position where I don't need it for anything. All the things I could / would ever use Windows for are totally voluntary.
@Xoa Gray This is only the second laptop I've ever bought actually (I bought a second hand Toshiba brick thing back in… I think it was the early 2000s). I kept Windows for a while to try out and see what it was like; then, as mentioned, failed to remove it. (Also partly because it ran Steam and games nicely, and I'm not sure Linux would have been as capable of that back in 2018.) I run Debian on just about everything else and would have run it on this too if I'd got round to it. There's also the factor that I'm kinda fed up with computers which pushed me towards taking a path with less resistance. *sigh* I think I might still enjoy working with computers if it weren't for capitalism pushing so much crap.
I get that, I used to work in IT till about 10 years ago when I walked away from it completely. But my burning hate for what Microsoft has done to Windows pushes it to a priority for me anymore. The OS is basically spyware you can browse the internet on at this point. I hate it honestly. Windows 11 in and of its self I actually kinda' liked at first, back before they went and actively started to enshitify it with "AI" and spyware.
A film series I've been enjoying with my dad (and now with my friends). Since I was a kid I've been watching these movies with him. Recently I visited my parents and my dad told me he hadn't watched the very last one, so we had to go to the movies to watch it together, despite I had already seen it. Then in the dinner, I had to do the thing I tend to do while we wait for our food.
If you enjoyed Talon, please help us greenlight the next episode through these links!!!SHOP: https://lunar-dragon-ent-shop.fourthwall.com/ FOURTHWALL (member...
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
www.wipo.intTypically if brand name is registered after domain, there is no chance getting a domain other than buying it from owner. Unless you can prove your unregistered trade mark is well known and that current domain owner is referencing to your brand and not some similar.
In short, always register domain and then registered trade mark/name afterwards before getting your brand public
@ArneBab At this point, it would be absolutely the right thing to get the domain back, one way or another.
(Probably register the trademark first if that isn't too expensive, then ask nicely, and then get out the lawyers)
@Sobex @ArneBab@rollenspiel.social I'd like nothing better, but I think I'd have to _start_ with a lawyer, just to get any idea at all of where to begin. I did try contacting one once, but they never replied to my query.
For example, I have no idea whether it _is_ the right strategy to start by registering the trademark, or how to do that, or even which country to do it in. (I'm guessing the USA, because it's .org and not .org.[country] – but _I'm_ not in the USA, so can I register a trademark there at all?)
@Sobex to be fair, it could be worse. they link to your site at the top and then also a couple other products which they make clear are not yours.
(unless I am missing a lot of ads because I block 'em.)
@jeffmcneill the project history went through three phases:
1. no idea yet whether this is going to be a widely used tool
2. domain names cost money and admin faff, search engines can find our website anyway, on balance doesn't seem worth it
3. too late
@jeffmcneill firstly, thanks for making Putty! I love it.
Secondly, perhaps putty.some-other-tld is still available?
@jeffmcneill
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.
Index of /~sgtatham/putty/0.83
the.earth.liThe TLD .org once had rules that would have prevented this.
Now a local butcher has a .org address for his shop. 🙁
I wish I did. It was an internal corporate email at my work warning specifically about putty and winscp fakers. They said like you did, the top SEO fake results. Except they said it was specifically malware, not advert junk
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
T2 package - security/putty - A Telnet and SSH client
t2sde.organd 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."
- ✅ https://www.cyon.ch/support/a/ssh-verbindung-mit-putty-herstellen
- ⏳ https://its.gmu.edu/knowledge-base/how-to-install-putty-ssh-for-windows/
How to Install PuTTY SSH for Windows - Information Technology Services
George Mason UniversitySomething 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
Clifford Chance