4 ms·

Agreed. In traditional terms, they're using a .org domain as a .com. The old rules aren't enforced, but they still hold some meaning. It sounds like they wan

by neilv 2y ago

Agreed. In traditional terms, they're using a .org domain as a .com. The old rules aren't enforced, but they still hold some meaning. It sounds like they want to do a "community edition", so they could just do it from a .com, and set expectations appropriately. If they instead wanted to have a community-developed open source project, but also sell derived/layered products, they might set up a community governance structure and home it on the .org, at arm's length from their .com where they do sales and other company-specific stuff. (BTW, sympathy on the challenges of building a sustainable business on open source, especially given some of the poor taste we sometimes see from freeloading commercial competitors.)

eddd-ddde 2y ago
I had no idea TLDs had any form of "semantics". TIL dot com is apparently a "commercial" site.
- NikolaNovak 2y ago
  They used to. .gov for government,.edu for education, etc. Certainly I would not expect a purely commercial entity on a ".org" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_top-level_domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_top-level_domain P.s. You're making me feel old :-)
- neilv 2y ago
  Yep, earlier on, the non-country-code ones had rules about who could use them, and the registrar for some of those was expected to be a custodian. Then they seemed to focus more on making money from registrations, than from the custodian aspect. Then ICANN created an industry of middleperson (maybe because there shouldn't just be one rent-seeker, but competing ones), and also seemed to bless a market of landgrabbing squatters. (And much more recently, some ICANN-connected people seemed to be scheming to grab a popular TLD for themselves, like a PE firm.) With most of the good and even bad domain names taken by squatters, there was demand for all sorts of new TLDs (which someone was happy to middleperson). As well as the risky practice of building your company atop a 2-letter country code TLD, where there's a significant chance of a change in government policy would break a lot of your links, URLs embedded in software, email addresses, and Googlejuice. Or simply have you over a barrel with exorbitant renewal fees (or bribes). (Historically, some of these ccTLDs were small islands, where there was one sysadmin person running the "ISP" for the island, including domain name authority, and the government didn't necessarily even know/understand.)
7bit 2y ago
> The old rules aren't enforced, but they still hold some meaning. Only to techies. And I'd say only to those who were techies back in the 90's or earlier. All the other people very likely have no clue why there are all these different TLDs. And for people outside the USA, UK and AU, .com Just means it's an English (as in language) website.

by neilv 2y ago

eddd-ddde 2y ago

I had no idea TLDs had any form of "semantics". TIL dot com is apparently a "commercial" site.

NikolaNovak 2y ago
They used to. .gov for government,.edu for education, etc. Certainly I would not expect a purely commercial entity on a ".org" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_top-level_domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_top-level_domain P.s. You're making me feel old :-)
neilv 2y ago
Yep, earlier on, the non-country-code ones had rules about who could use them, and the registrar for some of those was expected to be a custodian. Then they seemed to focus more on making money from registrations, than from the custodian aspect. Then ICANN created an industry of middleperson (maybe because there shouldn't just be one rent-seeker, but competing ones), and also seemed to bless a market of landgrabbing squatters. (And much more recently, some ICANN-connected people seemed to be scheming to grab a popular TLD for themselves, like a PE firm.) With most of the good and even bad domain names taken by squatters, there was demand for all sorts of new TLDs (which someone was happy to middleperson). As well as the risky practice of building your company atop a 2-letter country code TLD, where there's a significant chance of a change in government policy would break a lot of your links, URLs embedded in software, email addresses, and Googlejuice. Or simply have you over a barrel with exorbitant renewal fees (or bribes). (Historically, some of these ccTLDs were small islands, where there was one sysadmin person running the "ISP" for the island, including domain name authority, and the government didn't necessarily even know/understand.)

7bit 2y ago

> The old rules aren't enforced, but they still hold some meaning. Only to techies. And I'd say only to those who were techies back in the 90's or earlier. All the other people very likely have no clue why there are all these different TLDs. And for people outside the USA, UK and AU, .com Just means it's an English (as in language) website.