Not that I do not have faith in the abilities of the brain trust that is the PowerBASIC community, but I expect stage ONE should be to leverage an existing platform and then, if necessary or over time, build something bespoke.

Yes, there is cost, but that cost gives assurances that it will work out of the box with all [purchased] capabilities available immediately.

A cloud based solution gives us the piece of mind to forget about the platform and just worry about the content.

Brian:  I can put together a forum software in just a few days. The software itself would be free forever
Why re-invent the wheel. phpBB and MyBB to name two are free and open source supported by casts of thousands.

George:  A cloud based solution gives us the piece of mind to forget about the platform and just worry about the content.
Cloud = "someone else's computer(s)". I hope you mean shared hosting  with a major hosting provider and not something like AWS, Azure, GCP ... 

Costs above: $70 for the first two years with a FOSS solution..

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Gary tells me he can't do a dump of the vBulletin database, so there is no point in paying for vBulletin.a clean phpBB or myBB with a download link to gbThreads stored on the webserver would be the best way to go. 

Any other volunteers for nomination to a committee?

Currently the following have indicated a willingness to serve on such a committee:
George Bleck, Albert Richheimer, Stuart McLachlan.

>  It doesn't matter if the domain registration expires if we are using a Hosts entry

Not what I meant. I was suggesting that somebody buy the powerbasic.com domain when it expires in six weeks.  As long as it is made very clear that it's a "fan site" at the bottom of every page -- no direct connection to the compiler company that was closed --  I don't see a legal problem.

@Stuart McLachlan - Sorry, I used cloud to simply imply "not self hosted" but for clarity, I mean more along the lines of a SaaS solution.

@Eric Pearson - Grabbing PowerBASIC.com makes sense for continuity purposes and is the best case scenario; as a strong second we could obtain something within the .community, .group., .info, and/or .online TLDs as well.

(Today, 12:29 AM)Eric Pearson Wrote: >  It doesn't matter if the domain registration expires if we are using a Hosts entry

Not what I meant. I was suggesting that somebody buy the powerbasic.com domain when it expires in six weeks.  As long as it is made very clear that it's a "fan site" at the bottom of every page -- no direct connection to the compiler company that was closed --  I don't see a legal problem.

Assuming it's not renewed.  In which case it takes about 3 months before an expired domain becomes available for someone else to register.

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(Today, 01:09 AM)George Bleck Wrote: @Stuart McLachlan - Sorry, I used cloud to simply imply "not self hosted" but for clarity, I mean more along the lines of a SaaS solution.

@Eric Pearson - Grabbing PowerBASIC.com makes sense for continuity purposes and is the best case scenario; as a strong second we could obtain something within the .community, .group., .info, and/or .online TLDs as well.

That may lead to problems since it is still the registered trademark of PowerBasic Tools LLC, which is still owned by Taxwell, even if they are not using currently using the name.

PowerBASIC et al was closed by its latest owner. All employees were reassigned. Taxwell clearly has zero interest in continuing it, they won't even answer emails or postal mail about it.  It's a 32-bit complier in a 64-bit world that is increasingly web-oriented, which PB is not.  So I doubt that Taxwell would care enough to object to somebody else using the domain, and if they did object... we can honestly say "sorry, our bad, we'll get another domain".  We are clearly NOT trying to make money using their brand, and we are not damaging the brand.  In fact we are a User Group dedicated to peer-supporting PowerBASIC.

At the very least powerbasic.com could have an explanatory page that sends visitors to the new forum, regardless of the final domain.  Maybe powerbasic.org?

If Taxwell does renew the domain, then it's moot. I predict they won't.

"...  and if they did object ..."

They could renew the domain name without having a DNS server assigned and no host. If the domain name registration expires and registered by someone else; then they (Taxwell) have nothing to stand on, they blew their chance to control it. 

(Someone making a different compiler and calling it "PowerBASIC" is a different story.)

(edit - removed word "former". Taxwell is combined company name)

I suspect they  may renew it. Someone in NC just renewed Powerbasic.org last month!

Domain:
powerbasic.org
Registered On:
1999-08-07
Expires On:
2026-08-07
Updated On:
2025-08-07

Registrant Contact
State:NC
Country: US

and it re-directs to powerbasic.com !

As does forum.powerbasic.org !

so, some kind of interest there