[nc-org] ORG then and now

["Milton Mueller" <Mueller@syr.edu>]

I strongly agree with Elisabeth's perspective on RFC 920.
We must not forget that RFC 920 was written at a time
when there were only 200 hosts on the Internet,
there was no commercialization, either of the Internet
usage itself or of the registation of domain names.

It is therefore fruitless to debate the "original intent" of those 
bygone days. They just are not relevant to the current
situation.

Since 1996, ORG has been a completely open, first-come, first-
served space. The non-commercial constituency members 
overwhelmingly believe that this openness is a positive thing, 
with a few negatives. 

The only negative is that NSI tried to promote ORG and NET as
substitutes or defensive registrations for COM names.
And the prolonged restriction of new gTLDs made COM
and ORG names artificially attractive as identifiers. 

The best way to address this problem is through marketing
ORG properly, to give it to someone not connected to the
COM registry who will preserve its own unique identity.
But let users decide where they register.


>>> Elisabeth Porteneuve <Elisabeth.Porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr> 08/16/01 02:19PM >>>
> 
Let me first put an URL to the rfc920 (anno domini 1984):
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0920.txt 
It reads as souvenirs from a childhood, which after long years
looks like an old good time with no problems.

With the exception of MIL (I do not know much about it), noone
of initial .EDU, .GOV and .ORG remains as it was expected since
a long time.
Human nature plus ambiguity of language. You have some Canadian
organizations under .GOV, you have "training sections" of some
commercial companies under .EDU (I abstain from nominating
a French one I happen to know about) or private schools from outside
USA (still French exemples - all French public schools are recorded
under .fr, but at one time it was snob enough to try to get also
an .edu name, and few private did it).

Anyway, we definitely need an .ORG, with that meaning, it acts
like the fourth, neutral, outside dimension. We have icann.ORG, 
dnso.ORG, our European ccTLD organisation centr.ORG, my worldwide 
ccTLD organization wwtld.ORG, it is endless.

I understand the purpose of this TF is, among others, to devise
how to preserve this neutral TLD.

Elisabeth