Discuss mailing list

[Jonah Aragon <jonah AT triplebit.net>]

Recently, I’ve been somewhat concerned about the reliability of some of our 
community members (regardless of their current intentions, see “bus factor”), 
and I want to make sure our top-level domains are protected, “DNS 
resolution”-wise in any case. I also noticed we don’t really have any 
policies regarding the ownership, transfer, and deletion rights of our TLDs, 
so I wanted to specify things a bit. 

I’m proposing the following additions to our current policies:

## Operator Activity
-  Operators are defined as “Active” if at least one of the following 
conditions are met: (a) they are operating a working registration system, or 
(b) they have made a meaningful contribution to the community within the last 
6 months (for example, contributing on the mailing list, IRC, wiki, or 
GitHub). Additionally, their Tier 1 server must reliably resolve their TLD 
zone. 

## Deletion of top-level domains
- TLD zones may never be removed, with the exception of an ICANN collision, 
which should be voted on (following “.free” precedent). 

## TLD ownership
- Top-Level domains should be considered the property of the administrative 
team responsible for its operation, provided they are aligned with all 
applicable OpenNIC policies. 

## Voluntary transfer of TLD ownership
- Active operators unfit for continued TLD operation must post a notice to 
that effect on the mailing list. A private transfer of TLD ownership is 
prohibited. 
- Any Tier 2 or Tier 1 server operator may apply (via the mailing list 
notice) for ownership, within a 14 day period following the initial notice. 
- A list of applicants will be compiled, and the community will vote on a new 
operator based on that list. The vote will last for 14 days. 
- Following a community vote, the applicant selected by the community will 
immediately assume operation and ownership of the top-level domain. 
- The applicant selected by the community is expected to maintain domain 
records that existed prior to TLD transfer. 
- TLD operators are expected to continue resolving their TLD throughout this 
process, until the ownership is transferred. In a case of urgency, any Tier 1 
operator may assume interim operation throughout this process until a new 
operator is chosen. The TLD operator should reach out to another Tier 1 
operator to take over the zone before posting the notice, to ensure continued 
resolution. 

## Involuntary transfer of TLD ownership
- TLDs may not be involuntarily transferred from Active operators. 
- Any Tier 2 or 1 operator may apply for ownership of a TLD owned by an 
inactive operator. They must send a discussion thread to the mailing list 
declaring this statement. Any Tier 2 or 1 operator may reply to this notice 
with a challenge, if they wish to assume ownership of the zone. This 
discussion thread will last for a minimum of 21 days. 
- Unchallenged claims will be voted on by the community following discussion 
in a simple “Yes, transfer ownership” or “No, retain the current operator” 
vote. 
- Challenged claims will be voted on by the community following discussion, 
accounting for every claimant as an option. Additionally, the community may 
vote for no change to the ownership. 
- Following a community vote, if a new owner is chosen, ownership of the zone 
will immediately pass to them. They must be ready to provide resolution at 
this time. 
- New operators are expected to resolve zones/subdomains of the TLD that 
existed prior to them gaining ownership, from the last available good backup 
of the zone. 

## Inactive zone alternatives
- Zones operated by an inactive member of the community should be considered 
for an involuntary zone transfer first and foremost. 
- If no community member is willing to adopt an inactive zone, the zone may 
be archived in a read-only state, as they are prohibited from being deleted. 
- Archived zones shall exist as a read-only master copy on every Tier 1 
server. Tier 1 servers are prohibited from adding records to an archived 
zone, but existing records may be modified or removed manually at the request 
of a record owner posted to the mailing list. 
- A zone may be nominated to be archived in the event of operator inactivity, 
on the mailing list. Any member may nominate an eligible zone to be archived. 
This notice includes a 30 day minimum discussion period. 
- Any Tier 1 or 2 operator may challenge an archive nomination within the 
discussion timeframe if they wish to take ownership of a zone. In this case, 
the “involuntary zone ownership transfer” policies outlined above take 
precedent, and the archive proposal ends. 
- Following the discussion period, the zone shall be archived immediately, 
assuming no Tier 1 or 2 operator wishes to assume ownership of the zone. 

## Guaranteed Resolution
- If a Tier 1 server has been unresponsive for at least 7 days, and the 
operator can not be contacted, any Tier 1 operator may assume interim 
operation of the TLD zone on their own server, and the root should be changed 
immediately. The assuming operator must post a notice to that affect to the 
mailing list. The assuming operator must operate their zone based on the last 
known good backup of the TLD zonefile. The assuming operator may not add new 
records to the zone. Zones that are being operated by an interim zone 
operator should be considered for an “involuntary TLD transfer” (see above), 
if applicable. 
- TLD zonefiles should be considered public information, and they will be 
posted to the @OpenNIC GitHub organization, which will serve as a backup 
repository. 

## Notes
- These notes in this section are informative and non-binding. 
- ModernTLD, operators of the .o zone, operated by myself, has volunteered to 
act as an interim operator for any zones that may require that service, as 
per the “urgent” voluntary zone transfer procedure listed above. 
- ModernTLD will be providing a backup of all OpenNIC zones hosted on the 
@ModernTLD GitHub organization, in case anything affects the long-term 
reliability of the OpenNIC official GitHub repositories. 
- “Owners” and “operators” should be considered synonymous throughout this 
policy, as zones are the property of their operators. 

I think most of these changes should be “common sense” policies, but I feel 
like they should be codified just so everything is clear. 

Jonah