Re: Tor Exit Node hosting: torservers.net

[Moritz Bartl <tor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

> > > Your use of the Tor name and logo (and style) is deceptive.
> > I take it you didn't see the favicon. Look again.
> Fair enough, that is a tad misleading.

Yes, I have used the Tor logo in several places. For one, I am not a 
graphics designer. Secondly, I think my usage (it its context) is 
neither "deceptive" nor misleading. Actually, I want to provide Tor 
services after all.
When you look around, you will see a lot of people and companies using 
logos of products they do not own or are associated with. For example, 
you will often see the Microsoft logo in places where Microsoft products 
are sold.
Let's look at what the Tor website has to say about its logo:
https://www.torproject.org/trademark-faq.html.en

"If you're making non-commercial use of Tor software, you may also use 
the Tor onion logo (as an illustration, not as a brand for your 
products). Please don't modify the design or colors of the logo. You can 
use items that look like the Tor onion logo to illustrate a point (e.g. 
an exploded onion with layers, for instance), so long as they're not 
used as logos in ways that would confuse people."

I have also tried to contact the Tor developers through this mailing 
list about my planned usage, but I guess I should do that more 
explicitly, and will do that now in a mail to execdir. Sorry. It is very 
important to me to do this with approval of the Tor community (that's 
why "it started here").

See below on why I see my current usage as "non-commercial".

> Of course, that hope includes the big assumption of things like,
> all donations being used to cover costs (no profit)

I don't see "commercial" as bad per se. I don't see how I am competing 
with anyone, and if I did (if there was anyone else offering Tor 
services), that would be "useful" competition after all.

Let me clear with this: I am a student, willing to put my time and 
effort into running Tor nodes (and more). Depending on what "products" I 
am building here - which is something that I hope to have designed in a 
"community effort" (hence the mailing list) - I might *some day* 
consider to make some small amount of "management fee". At the moment, 
this is not part of the plan.

> , and all sponsors getting their donations back if the
> new relays never get off the ground.

The website is not clear about this yet, but I want to distinguish 
between node sponsorship and donations.

Node sponsorship is "a product you can buy", like you can buy managed 
and unmanaged servers. These are recurring payments with a contract, 
towards one or more specific services. I will not collect sponsorship 
money until we - everyone who is interested in funding a node in some 
way or another - have decided on a specific configuration, setup and 
server, which will then be ordered.

Donations on the other hand are irregular, nonrecurring payments. At the 
moment I agree that this looks like a "primary service" on 
torservers.net, but I really see it as something very optional - I just 
haven't worked on the other parts of the "Plans" page yet. I will add a 
section that one could also want to donate to the Tor project instead to 
fund development.
Donations will be collected, amounts published, and once some node can 
be funded from them, used. One pragmatic approach to this would be to 
bill the regular node sponsors less in one month to make up for these 
irregular donations.
I already have several people interested in funding a node, and even if 
I cannot find enough to fund a big node, there's always a small one we 
can add.

> I haven't seen anything come out of his own
> mailing list yet, but you can be sure I'll be watching it closely.

Thanks for your interest. :-) If you want to find out more about me, 
feel free to visit my blog at www.wiredwings.com .

--
Moritz Bartl
GPG 0xED2E9B44
http://www.torservers.net/
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