The CyanogenMod team has shown some amazing gentlemanly honor, mixed with a worthy dash of can-do pragmatism, and I hoist a glass o' the pure in their direction.
> "I purchased the CyanogenMod.com domain name 3 years ago and have been responsible for the renewal fees ever since"
What's not clear is whether he purchased it (through a broker or private sale) or whether he "purchased" it in the sense he just registered it with a registrar. If the latter, he could not have been up for more than $60 ($30 is more likely).
The way he writes it makes it seem like the renewal fees ("... ever since") were a big deal and that he was doing them a huge favor by paying for it.
> If I was out for the money, why an earth would I have transferred the domain to the CM Team for free?
Then why did he set up the domain in the first place? Isn't it a kind of donation? And supposedly he was soliciting donations himself..? Isn't that the least you could do?
There is so much wrong with the other guy's story [1] that it's hard to even know where to begin.
1. No mention of the 10K extortion attempt.
2. No mention of the "big deal" (fraud) perpetrated by impersonating Steve and or the CM team to negotiate deals that netted the guy (a guesstimated) $8K.
3. The Registrar changing the NSs of a locked domain is either baloney, or a good reason to never use that registrar again. That would make it impossible to do a zero downtime domain xfer.
4. Even on twitter his story was inconsistent or half full of him lashing out at people.
I've been told that the team is not pursuing anything, though PayPal, N2A and... what was the other big one... all have been contacted and told what happened (see #2).
Were there ever "the days" when people would say "I'm sorry" without caveats or excuses and mean it 100%? At best, he apologizes to anyone he "offended". I guess he offended my sense of decency, and offended my sensibilities given how to handle cases where you screwed up. Between his Twitter and this "summary", I would say the shovel is still in his hands. I wonder if he paused for breath or realized how big the hole was.
>Were there ever "the days" when people would say "I'm sorry" without caveats or excuses and mean it 100%?
Nope. The one thing I remember from How to Win Friends and Influence People is that nobody ever believes they are at fault. Pointing fingers is rarely productive. It's best just to accept it & learn from it & move on.
So we can all learn something from that G+-post - if you want to apologize for your behaviour, don't imply that it wasn't really your fault, apologize for everything.
Especially Japanese company-leaders handle this very well, often resigning over (to Westerners) trivial matters - it's their company and they take the blame.
This way, the guy just makes himself look even worse! If he would've just left the matter be he would have still had the benefit of doubt, which he himself now destroyed.
"No money has ever been extorted from CM nor will it ever be," Deveci told Ars. Ahmet claims that Kondik once asked him how much he would be willing to sell the domain for. "I replied as a joke and said $10K. He didn't even reply after that, he went offline, and simply started changing all my logins access and passwords."
Either Deveci is trying to hide the fact that he attempted extortion, or he has no sense of proportion. $10,000 is exactly the wrong amount for a joke. $1 would be silly. $100 would be reasonable. $1 million would be a joke. $10,000 is extortion.
There is a lot more information regarding stuff from the past few months involving other accounts and/or proof of defrauding. I'd basically be puppeting someone from the team, repeating it from IRC here and that feels wrong to me. Suffice it to say, I don't buy for a second that this was meant as a joke, and at the very least I don't blame Steve for immediately taking action.
You can change the nameservers of a locked domain all day long. The lock status only prevents a transfer attempt, not updates to the domain's WHOIS or nameservers.
