Re: Draft New Draft

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

Hi el,

> > Antony, do you have a personal economical stake in the management of any
> > ccTLD?  (no, I'm not trying to throw fud with that question, it's just
> > that it seems the only reason why you would be trying so desperately to
> > make sure governments keep their hands off those wonderful
> > profit-makers). 
> 
> 7 on the Kent-Meter. 
> Antony told you his position at IATLD and he's doing it very well. 
> And, Goose and Gander, full disclosure for yourself, John, too!
> el

        I've always been very open about my position, and most following
these lists have already heard it. A couple of years back I set the stone
rolling to get ".gp" & ".mq" setup and delegated. We have now transitioned
them to a non-profit membership structure where direct registrants can be
members. It was incorporated as a non-profit organisation under French law
around October '98.
        My day to day work is at an ISP as CTO where I earn my living. I
also do on a pro-bono basis most of the work of running the registry,
however we'll probably start charging the GP & MQ NIC for maintenance fees
once the membership agrees on what is fair, basically so it doesn't look as
if it is unilaterally sponsored by us (non-profit organisations that are
maintained by ONE decidedly FOR-PROFIT company often get accused of being
puppets of that company).
	From a company standpoint it's nice that our local registry doesn't
put all sorts of hurdles and hoops to jump over. This makes it much easier
to setup systems (websites, mail forwarding whatever) for our customers
than if we had to register them under some ccTLDs that just seem to enjoy
making life difficult...
	IF the GP & MQ NIC gets "taken over" or "assimilated" by the
organisation that runs ".fr" (AFNIC) then registrations would certainly
become much more difficult. All local competitors of ours have exactly the
same ease of access to names than we have (it's not too complicated really
seeing that there are only around 250 names delegated under each... One day
I'll actually count them).

Yours, John Broomfield.