.org is a public trust

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Tim O'Reilly
Jul. 21, 2002 10:19 AM
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URL: http://not.invisible.net/signals/bin/000055.shtml...

For those who don't know their work, here's a brief recap: Carl helped shame the SEC into putting the Edgar database online by doing it himself in a few weeks after the SEC claimed it was a three-year multimillion dollar project; he ran one of the first ever internet radio stations, the Internet Multicasting Service; he organized the Internet World's Fair. I've been friends with Carl for many years, since we sponsored the "geek of the week" internet radio program for IMS back in 1995. He's consistently been a voice for the true owners of the Internet -- its users. And of course, Paul Vixie is one of the unsung heroes of the net. We introduced the original open source "meme campaign" with the phrase, "What's the single most mission critical program on the Internet?" The answer of course is Bind, the Berkeley Internet Name Daemon, which Paul has maintained at the Internet Software Consortium since the very early days of its existence.

And of course we all know that ICANN has done a miserable job of involving the public in its attempt to reform the domain name registration monopoly.

At any rate, the .org domain is now up for grabs, and ICANN is taking applications for the registrar. Given that .org is the top-level domain for nonprofits and other similar organizations, it seems appropriate that the registrar itself be a non-profit. This isn't a requirement of the competition, of course, and there are many commercial entities applying for the position. There are also a number of applications by for-profit companies partnering with non-profits (including one by the Internet Society, on whose board I used to serve.) But in each of these cases, the non-profit is definitely the junior partner. In this case, we really do have a couple of guys who are interested in the idea of .org as a public trust, and they even plan to release the software needed to maintain a TLD (top level domain) into the public domain.

One factor in the choice of registrars is going to be public support. So I'd like you to add your voice. Go to www.invisible.net and click on the blue dot. This will take you to a page at not.invisible.net where you can add your comments, or get more information about other ways you can provide support to the bid by the Internet Multicasting Service and the Internet Software Consortium (both nonprofits) to manage the .org registry.

Do keep in mind that reasonable arguments will do more good than flames.

For more information on the actual bid to run the TLD, see trusted.resource.org.

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. O'Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics, including the Web 2.0 Summit, the Web 2.0 Expo, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, and the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Tim's blog, the O'Reilly Radar, "watches the alpha geeks" to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim is an activist for open source and open standards, and an opponent of software patents and other incursions of new intellectual property laws into the public domain. Tim's long-term vision for his company is to change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators. For everything Tim, see tim.oreilly.com.

Do you agree that it would be cool to have a non-profit run by internet pioneers running at least one of the top-level domain registries?
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