Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed

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

> > > The middle-road solution is to set down objective criteria that a registry
> > > must meet (much like was done for registrars), and accept applications
> > > based upon that criteria. Each application will also contain the single TLD
> > > that the applying registry wishes to run, based on their business plan and
> > > marketing data.
> >
> > (...)Then, after the TLDs have been agreed
> > upon, if a registry so wishes, it can present exactly the proposal you
> > just described, given that the TLD is in the pool agreed upon.  If
> > not, too bad.
> 
> So the registry that wants to run .foo is out of luck if .bar is chosen?
> Ridiculous. Companies willing to enter the market will have already
> done their (expensive) market research to determine what TLD to
> apply for. In the case of Image Online Design, there was quite a bit
> of research in selecting .web back in 1995. When the approval
> process for TLDs begins, this is the TLD IOD expects to submit.

That was based on the (incorrect) assumption that any prospective registries
showing up would be given the choice to have X TLDs of their own. Under a
plan for introduction of gTLDs independent from registry operators,
presumably gTLDs chosen would be popular choices, so all of them would have a
healthy amount of registrations, and *ANY* prospective registry operator
would get lots of money from running *ANY* gTLD.
STRAW suggestion here: Technical backend operations for a registry are not
too complicated (they are not dealing with the general public, but with
registrars), so although from a transaction point of view there may be many
transactions, from a staff workload point of view, there would probably be
not much different work whether the registry has 100.000 domains or whether
it has 1 million (obviously more in the case of 1 million, but not 10 times
more), and staffing levels at both registry operators would be very similar.
Some system should be devised to level out charges amongst the registry
operators so that they won't complain of envy amongst themselves (maybe add
up all the monthly registrations of ALL new gTLDs and divide equally, after
all, the work is going to be very similar). When Christopher keeps touting
that NSI has an unfair advantage etc... I can see his point, which is why I
would also see it unfair that a registry operator that gets a TLD with
"only" 100.000 domain registrations would complain that it is unfair that
the next registry operator gets 10x the cash for only slightly more work...
Just throwing it out into the arena here... :-)

> Ironically, I suspect that if it ever did come down to voting, .web
> would be in the top 3 anyway.

I would tend to agree with you, but then again if it doesn't qualify as a
gTLD, what use is it?

Yours, John Broomfield.