For years, the Drupal community has revolved around Drupal.org, the official home of the best CMS in the world. There are assorted third-party sites that float around it (one of which I've created and sadly neglected for a month or so). Various commercial entities like Bryght base their businesses on Drupal. Others folks make a living as consultants adapting Drupal for their clients. None of them, to date, have scampered off to grab the domain name 'Drupal.com.' A few months ago, though, someone thought to check what IS there.

Turns out, the domain was registered by a guy named Ric. He runs OpenDomain, a foundation that he says is dedicated to protecting domain names for the public good. Protecting them from what? Well, you know. People who go out and register the domains use them for bad stuff. Fair enough. Ric's OpenDomain Foundation owns fistfulls of domains, some sporting the names of open source projects, others using acronyms for popular web standards, and still others with catchy titles like 'LipoSculpture.com'. I, for one, am glad that LipoSculpture is in good hands.

If you can convince him that you will make good use of one of his OpenDomains, Ric will let you use it for free -- with certain conditions. Like 'you have to link back to the OpenDomain home page on every page of your site.' And 'All the OTHER links on your site have to be marked with the nofollow flag.' And 'You have to update your site frequently, and keep your site visible in search engines.' And 'I reserve the right to suspend your use of the domain at any time.'

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this is a recipe for an AutomaticMedia style network of web sites, all driving traffic to OpenDomain's page. To Ric's credit, he doesn't seem to be selling ad space or otherwise profiting off of the OpenDomains page. And it's clear that he takes the project very seriously -- in discussions both private and public, he frequently talks about how much money he's invested in protecting these domains. When organizations offer to buy the domains, though, he replies that he can't. He's bound by the rules of the OpenDomains foundation -- rules that he created -- and must retain control.

When all is said and done, I just can't figure out why this "service" is valuable. The idea that the .com suffix is a golden egg died with Pets.com. And, yes, there's the chance that a spammer might have gone out and registered Drupal.com, hoping to trap unwary CMS customers and sell them porn or viagra or EZ Home Refinancing. But WhiteHouse.com has been out there for years, and no one ever confused it with an official statement from the Executive Branch. Who benefits, really?

I don't begrudge Ric the chance to pursue his hobby, business model, or whatever it is. It's a free world, and there's nothing to stop him. He's not eating kittens or anything like that. But with all his talk of financial sacrifices and the public good, he sets himself up as a benevolent benefactor, a 'contributor' to communities that he has never been a part of and never assisted. He's claimed that allowing someone to use Drupal.com would be 'the biggest single donation the community has ever received.' Bigger, apparently, than Google's $50,000 or Sun's donation of high-end servers. To his credit, he retracted the claim when he found out about the extent of those prior donations, but it should give pause to anyone who thinks that OpenDomain is 'all about the community'.

At its best, OpenDomain.org is a way for Ric to give reasonably memorable domains to people who couldn't afford them. At its worst, it's an attempt to buy influence in Open Source projects by registering a domain, hyping its value, then positioning OpenDomain as the 'gatekeeper' for that perceived value. The Drupal community doesn't need Drupal.com -- if Ric wants to contribute to the community, he's free to set up a site there himself.