4 ms·

.me is cooler, but... That all the cool 2-letter TLDs are designated as country codes was an extraordinary mistake that will have unpredictable and devastating

.me is cooler, but... That all the cool 2-letter TLDs are designated as country codes was an extraordinary mistake that will have unpredictable and devastating consequences long into the future.

croes 3mo ago
How about .mine?
HumanCCF 3mo ago
Our goal is for .self to be more than just another TLD string, we want to specifically empower the self-hosting use case with local clients that integrate directly with the TLD and operate shared services like mail servers as a public good. We want to dramatically simplify the effort it takes to set up a domain for homelabs and offer free services that are directly tied to the domain like email.
- quotemstr 3mo ago
  And you needed a gTLD for this task why?
  - HumanCCF 3mo ago
    We don't necessarily, however there are many benefits for doing so. We could simply purchase a domain and then build our initiative beneath it but then everything we do would be beneath that domain, meaning there would be two dots in what is our effective TLD. That would also mean we are a bit beholden to whichever TLD we are beneath and also whichever registrar we purchased our domain from. With the services we hope to offer around things like TLS certs and emails, it just makes more sense for use to own the whole thing from the root.
    - quotemstr 3mo ago
      <something>.duckdns.org. works fine, and being "beholden" to ICANN is no worse than being a client of one of the big traditional gTLDs. If you want "one person, one name", well, .name is there for that. It's a commons-pollution problem. Are we going to have to start thinking of every word with a dot in the middle as a potential name? IMHO, a new gTLD is justifiable only when there's some concrete differentiator attached to it, e.g. .local indicating mDNS, or .it indicating "Italy" What value is there in "horse.horse" being something you can resolve with DNS? What value does <something>.self give me, as a reader, that <something>.name or <something>.me or any of the other zillion variations on the same idea doesn't? If anything, it creates confusion! "Oh, I met Bob McBobFace. Is he mcbobface.me? mcbobface.name? mcbobface.local?". I have no objection to providing people with free subdomains under whatever assignment scheme you guys are using, but wouldn't <something>.net have worked too, and been a lot cheaper? I guess I just don't get the value to the public of increasing the set of dotted word suffixes that indicate that a word is a a cognizable DNS object.
      - HumanCCF 3mo ago
        > It's a commons-pollution problem. Are we going to have to start thinking of every word with a dot in the middle as a potential name? IMHO, a new gTLD is justifiable only when there's some concrete differentiator attached to it, e.g. .local indicating mDNS, or .it indicating "Italy" So the new gTLD round is open right now, we're getting more TLDs whether we like it or not. Our goal is to make one that has features built-in which cater to the self-hosting use case. So that is our key differentiator, that every endpoint leveraging our TLD should be someone's small-scale homelab setup. > I have no objection to providing people with free subdomains under whatever assignment scheme you guys are using, but wouldn't <something>.net have worked too, and been a lot cheaper? Technically yes it could work, but given the suite of features we'd like to build into our TLD, it would make things more difficult if we didn't own it. We would be dependent on external parties for our root domain, the root of trust for TLS certificates, all users' subdomains would have an extra dot etc.
        akerl_ 3mo ago
        It just feels a bit like you've decided to solve the hardest possible side quest first. Everything else on your roadmap could have been built and shipped in the universe that exists, and then if down the road it's working, you could have aimed for your own TLD. Instead you're putting the TLD first and any of the actual functionality that end users might want afterwards.
    - psychoslave 3mo ago
      You can't purchase a domain, only rent it. If anything, going through a "pay to get a temporary monopoly on some virtual object" is the very opposite of empowering people with more autonomy as the project seems to try to support.
9dev 3mo ago
The only mistake was not opening the root namespace altogether. It’s just a money grab.
- microgpt 3mo ago
  The only mistake was not putting all US domains under .us, now the US has an an exorbitant privilege to print and enforce rules on new TLDs.
  - dgellow 3mo ago
    I mean, that wasn’t done by mistake
    - philipallstar 3mo ago
      Sometimes hindsight is 1/20.
  - kmoser 3mo ago
    What do you mean by "US domains?" Domains registered by US citizens? Hosted in the US (in which case does that include territories)? Regardless of the definition, I don't see an easy way to do this, nor a reason to, since domains can change hands (and hosts) across countries.
    - NewJazz 3mo ago
      .edu and .gov are us-specific, not sure if that is what they are referring to.
    - microgpt 3mo ago
      Domains that fall under the jurisdiction of the US? The domains themselves not the websites they point to? Everything under .games is controlled by the US government, the German government gets .games.de instead. To be fair it should be .games.us and .games.de (or .spiele.de) Even gTLDs using other languages, like .kaufen, are under US jurisdiction. A German website selling to German customers using a .kaufen domain is forced to abide by US law as well as German law or loses the domain. Using a .de domain they would only have to abide by German law. That's unfair that the US government gets to stick its grubby fingers into every TLD that isn't a country code.
AlienRobot 3mo ago
I think letting anyone make any TLD is a bigger mistake. .zip .pdf .mp3 I'd like to thank Caribbean island of Anguilla for having a ccTLD that helps identify which websites aren't worth your time in one quick look.
namegulf 3mo ago
That's a popular tld for 'me' domains, like you said it's closer to .self in meaning but has better appeal However .me (https://namegulf.com/tld/cctld/me https://namegulf.com/tld/cctld/me) is a ccTLD managed by the Government of Montenegro, they set their own rules
pezezin 3mo ago
I have the opposite opinion, TLDs should have been restricted to ISO 3166 codes only, with only a few exceptions for international organizations and private networks.

.me is cooler, but... That all the cool 2-letter TLDs are designated as country codes was an extraordinary mistake that will have unpredictable and devastating consequences long into the future.

croes 3mo ago

How about .mine?

HumanCCF 3mo ago

Our goal is for .self to be more than just another TLD string, we want to specifically empower the self-hosting use case with local clients that integrate directly with the TLD and operate shared services like mail servers as a public good. We want to dramatically simplify the effort it takes to set up a domain for homelabs and offer free services that are directly tied to the domain like email.

quotemstr 3mo ago
And you needed a gTLD for this task why?
- HumanCCF 3mo ago
  We don't necessarily, however there are many benefits for doing so. We could simply purchase a domain and then build our initiative beneath it but then everything we do would be beneath that domain, meaning there would be two dots in what is our effective TLD. That would also mean we are a bit beholden to whichever TLD we are beneath and also whichever registrar we purchased our domain from. With the services we hope to offer around things like TLS certs and emails, it just makes more sense for use to own the whole thing from the root.
  - quotemstr 3mo ago
    <something>.duckdns.org. works fine, and being "beholden" to ICANN is no worse than being a client of one of the big traditional gTLDs. If you want "one person, one name", well, .name is there for that. It's a commons-pollution problem. Are we going to have to start thinking of every word with a dot in the middle as a potential name? IMHO, a new gTLD is justifiable only when there's some concrete differentiator attached to it, e.g. .local indicating mDNS, or .it indicating "Italy" What value is there in "horse.horse" being something you can resolve with DNS? What value does <something>.self give me, as a reader, that <something>.name or <something>.me or any of the other zillion variations on the same idea doesn't? If anything, it creates confusion! "Oh, I met Bob McBobFace. Is he mcbobface.me? mcbobface.name? mcbobface.local?". I have no objection to providing people with free subdomains under whatever assignment scheme you guys are using, but wouldn't <something>.net have worked too, and been a lot cheaper? I guess I just don't get the value to the public of increasing the set of dotted word suffixes that indicate that a word is a a cognizable DNS object.
    - HumanCCF 3mo ago
      > It's a commons-pollution problem. Are we going to have to start thinking of every word with a dot in the middle as a potential name? IMHO, a new gTLD is justifiable only when there's some concrete differentiator attached to it, e.g. .local indicating mDNS, or .it indicating "Italy" So the new gTLD round is open right now, we're getting more TLDs whether we like it or not. Our goal is to make one that has features built-in which cater to the self-hosting use case. So that is our key differentiator, that every endpoint leveraging our TLD should be someone's small-scale homelab setup. > I have no objection to providing people with free subdomains under whatever assignment scheme you guys are using, but wouldn't <something>.net have worked too, and been a lot cheaper? Technically yes it could work, but given the suite of features we'd like to build into our TLD, it would make things more difficult if we didn't own it. We would be dependent on external parties for our root domain, the root of trust for TLS certificates, all users' subdomains would have an extra dot etc.
      - akerl_ 3mo ago
        It just feels a bit like you've decided to solve the hardest possible side quest first. Everything else on your roadmap could have been built and shipped in the universe that exists, and then if down the road it's working, you could have aimed for your own TLD. Instead you're putting the TLD first and any of the actual functionality that end users might want afterwards.
  - psychoslave 3mo ago
    You can't purchase a domain, only rent it. If anything, going through a "pay to get a temporary monopoly on some virtual object" is the very opposite of empowering people with more autonomy as the project seems to try to support.

9dev 3mo ago

The only mistake was not opening the root namespace altogether. It’s just a money grab.

microgpt 3mo ago
The only mistake was not putting all US domains under .us, now the US has an an exorbitant privilege to print and enforce rules on new TLDs.
- dgellow 3mo ago
  I mean, that wasn’t done by mistake
  - philipallstar 3mo ago
    Sometimes hindsight is 1/20.
- kmoser 3mo ago
  What do you mean by "US domains?" Domains registered by US citizens? Hosted in the US (in which case does that include territories)? Regardless of the definition, I don't see an easy way to do this, nor a reason to, since domains can change hands (and hosts) across countries.
  - NewJazz 3mo ago
    .edu and .gov are us-specific, not sure if that is what they are referring to.
  - microgpt 3mo ago
    Domains that fall under the jurisdiction of the US? The domains themselves not the websites they point to? Everything under .games is controlled by the US government, the German government gets .games.de instead. To be fair it should be .games.us and .games.de (or .spiele.de) Even gTLDs using other languages, like .kaufen, are under US jurisdiction. A German website selling to German customers using a .kaufen domain is forced to abide by US law as well as German law or loses the domain. Using a .de domain they would only have to abide by German law. That's unfair that the US government gets to stick its grubby fingers into every TLD that isn't a country code.

AlienRobot 3mo ago

I think letting anyone make any TLD is a bigger mistake. .zip .pdf .mp3 I'd like to thank Caribbean island of Anguilla for having a ccTLD that helps identify which websites aren't worth your time in one quick look.

namegulf 3mo ago

That's a popular tld for 'me' domains, like you said it's closer to .self in meaning but has better appeal However .me (https://namegulf.com/tld/cctld/me https://namegulf.com/tld/cctld/me) is a ccTLD managed by the Government of Montenegro, they set their own rules

pezezin 3mo ago

I have the opposite opinion, TLDs should have been restricted to ISO 3166 codes only, with only a few exceptions for international organizations and private networks.