Please stop inventing “accounts of things” and associating them with me.hgm wrote: ↑Fri Sep 17, 2021 4:00 pm 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.
The “forum” is “owned” by the “group of individuals” who conceived the idea of a forum, agreed inter alia to support it by transferring their posting from rgcc to it, etc etc and gave ICD the right to host it on basis terms and conditions.
ICD can continue “hosting” as long as the “group of individuals” doesn’t call them into breach and revoke the hosting permission.
Revocation or not, the same “GOI” can give hosting right to anyone else, I would assume. I don’t recollect the term “exclusive right” in the agreement.
The only chess programmers remaining from that group of individuals are me and Ed. Bob would be but I’m told he is gone from these things now. Bruce is long gone.
Custodianship of an intangible piece of IP is not very useful save for conferring some marginal status onto some continuity forum. But, as everybody knows, it’s the ICD actual control over the domain name that is really the issue. It gives them/Quentin blocking rights.