As Mr. McKillop has not responded to any communications we have sent him, we have attempted to have him cease these operations via Nominet's Dispute Resolution Service. However, unfortunately, due to what we can only perceive as a flaw in the procedure, as Mr. McKillop has continued to not respond, the burden would be on us in order for the process to continue. We would have to pay Nominet the sum of £880 so that one of their "experts" could supervise the process. To quote an email they sent,
If we do not receive your fees... we will deem your complaint to be withdrawn, and we will close our file on this matter.
Dubious logic aside, this is something we simply can't afford to do. We're a Free Software project, run, operated, and developed entirely by volunteers in their spare time. We don't have money to spend on "experts" or lawyers. So, although Neil McKillop is abusing our trademarks and the goodwill of those who contribute to the OpenGuides project, we are effectively able to do nothing about it. (Note: you can find correspondence on this matter in drs_files.)
All we can ask that you do is to firstly keep your eyes and ears open: if you find a reference to one of Mr. McKillop's sites, please either inform the person in question what is going on, or tell us about it so that we can get in touch; and, secondly, tell Mr. McKillop exactly how you feel about it, by emailing him - either at cmpadmin@nvmtech.co.uk or neil@mckillop.org. If you have access to Internet Relay Chat, he has set up a channel on irc.freenode.net called #openguide. Stop by and share your opinion.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for your interest in the OpenGuides Project.
The OpenGuides Team