Simon TathamJul 13

General reminder:

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.

PuTTY: a free SSH and Telnet client

Show threadsaxnotJul 13
@simontatham to be fair the official uri looks a lot less official and I can understand everyone who will mistake it as unprofessional / not the real deal / fan site
Show threadSimon TathamJul 13

@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!

Show threadWilfried Klaebe

Well... PuTTY more or less belongs on the "WHO Essential Medicines List" for (windows) computing now...

@simontatham @saxnot

Jul 13 at 7:05pmWeb