Can someone explain the issue? Currently, anyone can buy a .org. I imagine that this company will charge more money for .orgs in exchange for some verification procedure. Compare this to today, where anyone can buy .orgs for any reason: it might be a public good if there is some authentication and prestige.
NGOs and non-profits have money. Paying $100 a year to maintain a verified "I'm not a company" status might be a good idea. Keep in mind that non profits aren't necessarily good -- many are essentially tax shelters.
This article feels anti-capitalist. Nothing in the article makes a principled argument for how .orgs should operate. What's the argument for allowing anyone to buy a .org for $10 per year?
> However, the reading club with 20 members and yearly income of 300€ cannot afford a 100€ .org.
Correct, I already seen that happen where smaller club shut down their web page because a hosting provider was unreliable. Since the lack of funds and expertise to move their WP site
they now use facebook instead.
no, .org is reserved for organizations that aren't dedicated to making money. size isn't relevant.
let me turn the question around: why should Ethos get .org? make them drum up support for some new TLD. This is purely, purely a cash grab, allowed by regulatory capture, and it should be stopped.
What does "reserved" mean? Anyone can buy a .org. There isn't any actual restriction.
Well, let's say that a mission driven for profit corporation could ensure that .org owners aren't for-profit -- and do a better job than the current committee. Should they be allowed a .org? In my world, I'd say no, since I'd prefer that .orgs are actually restricted to non corporates.
> What does "reserved" mean? Anyone can buy a .org. There isn't any actual restriction.
Fair point. The "restriction" was really a recommendation (from RFC 920 in 1985, in a more polite time on the nascent "internet").
> [...] Should they be allowed a .org?
Who cares? The cat is out of the bag. As of today there are 1514 TLDs [0]. .mil and .gov should still have some requirements, but .org, .net, .com (and almost all the other TLDs) are all effectively the same thing.
What "recommendation" are you referring to from RFC 920? All I see is:
ORG = Organization, any other domains meeting the second level requirements.
I see nothing about not-for-profit or money mentioned at all in RFC 920. There are occurrences of the word "commercial", but they're all in reference to the COM domain. The ORG domain is only referred-to as being for "Organizations".
On which basis would you restrict registrations from country x, where founding some organization is free or even comes with tax benefits while you'd allow registrations from countries requires some kind of operating income?
A club is certainly more pro-humanity than some of the existing misathropic stuff there like internet.org. Philanthropy doesn't have to be about giving money.
Per RFC920[1], which defined the initial TLDs, the ORG domain was for "Organizations". It doesn't say anything about "ethos", not-for-profit status, etc. It's for "organizations".
I'd love to see a citation re: this "not-for-profit" designation being codified somewhere by IANA. It's not supported by RFC 920.
I'd also love to see something indicating it is for big organizations only, which is patently false. Obviously it is irrelevant why it has that ethos as long as it in fact exists (if you want to pretend the general public doesn't see .org as generally indicating a service to humanity rather than a commercial venture, we can just agree to disagree). Also, in the doc you link it is clearly, evidently, for non-commercial organizations since .com comes first and covers all commercial entities, and.org is for all other entities. It is part of the Public Interest Registry. The point is there is a legitimate reason to want to use it, even if you are small - and no good reason to force small NGOs to abandon it other than to increase profit extraction from non-commercial organizations.
I don't have a thing to say re: "big" vs "small" organizations using the ORG domain. Nor does the RFC say anything about it. (Perhaps someone else in the discussion was talking about organization size, but it wasn't me...)
re: public perception vs. definition - I'm not "pretending" anything. The RFC doesn't call out that ORG is for not-for-profits, or for organizations related to any particular "ethos" or philosophy. People can think what they want about it, and organizations can try to use the public perception of ORG to influence public perception of their organization however they want. That doesn't change what the RFC says, which was my only point. The RFC doesn't specify who it is for, beyond "Organizations". This notion that ORG was "reserved" for not-for-profits seems to be completely lacking in evidence.
It is specifically for "other" organizations, ie those that don't fall into the categories above. One of those categories is for-profit, ie commercial, organizations. It's not for all organizations including the above, but those that are not the above. It's pretty clear.
I think it's an implicit read, that is, given that anyone commercial should be using .com, anyone using .org should be non-commercial (and likewise non-educational, non-governmental, non-military).
That being said, it's not like .org has, in practice, ever been exclusively for non-commercial entities or non-profits.
NGOs and non-profits have money. Paying $100 a year to maintain a verified "I'm not a company" status might be a good idea. Keep in mind that non profits aren't necessarily good -- many are essentially tax shelters.
This article feels anti-capitalist. Nothing in the article makes a principled argument for how .orgs should operate. What's the argument for allowing anyone to buy a .org for $10 per year?