Discuss mailing list

[Philipp Schafft <lion AT lion.leolix.org>]

Good morning,

speaking for FurNIC here, not for OpenNIC.


On Wed, 2020-11-11 at 02:16 +0000, FreedomNIC Team wrote:
> We're the team behind FreedomNIC. FreedomNIC was founded a couple of
> weeks ago, [...]

I would like to second this question:
> Why did you send this so early? Before you were fully setup?
  -- Charles Wyble <charles AT turnsys.com> 



> [...] We would like to peer with OpenNIC as it would grow FreedomNIC
> at an even faster rate, make discovery of FreedomNIC easy and it would
> grow the alternative DNS network as a whole,

Maybe share your opinions with us how OpenNIC would benefit from it; it
should be mutual, shouldn't it? (Please keep in mind that I'm not
speaking for OpenNIC here, this one is more my personal opinion).


> enough to maybe one day start a foundation.

Not sure what you mean by 'a foundation', do you mean1 founding a
corporate body?


> Let's answer some questions you all may have.
> 
> What TLD's are available?
> 
> At this time all of the TLD's available are as follows: .arpa, .fnic
> (closed, not open to the
> public), .web, .archive, .ger, .ginga, .zmrd, .xeon, .xd, .test, .px, 
> .retro, .hovna and finally .wingy (with which is a closed TLD and is not 
> open to the public)
> 
What do you mean by 'closed' and 'not open to the public'?


> Why is .arpa a TLD?
> 
> We have policies when it comes to establishing TLD's to disallow any
> TLD that is on ICANN's network but we do have and make exemptions for
> certain TLD's including .arpa. .arpa was exempted from said policies
> because its not used much in the first place and the only limitations
> we really as FreedomNIC put on it were that any domain that existed in
> the .arpa namespace on ICANN would not be allowed to be registered in
> FreedomNIC's namespace.

How do you ensure you do not conflict with future registrations on the
namespace? I mean, isn't the hierarchical concept of DNS not exactly
this? Single owner subspaces to avoid conflicts? See also below.

I would really recommend you to review this decision.


> What's your policy for establishing TLD's?
> 
> Our policy [...]
> 
> Who runs FreedomNIC?
> 
> There are 3 heads [...]
> 
> What would you do to combat domain squatting?
> 
> At this time, an expiration system for domains and TLD's is not in
> place but we do have plans to establish one.
> 
> Do you have a website?
> 
> Yes we do! [...] https://freedomnic.net. [...; not exactly 'Yes' as
> only a default page at time of writing]
> 
> OpenNIC exists, why did you create this?
> 
> [...] Our main premise is on the Freedom of Expression which we define
> as including the right to launch a TLD with no money, no servers, no
> nothing. We handle it all.

See below.


> Do you have a publicly available TLD list for OpenNIC or other users
> who might need it?
> 
> We do not at this time but it will be available soon at tlds.fnic.
> 
> Do you have intentions to ban or disallow the creation of TLD's that
> already exist in other namespaces like OpenNIC's?
> 
> Yes we do! Should we peer up with OpenNIC and other alternative DNS
> servers we will indeed put policies in place to prevent that kind of
> situation from happening. At this time though, seeing as we aren't
> peering there is no danger of conflicts. We will, for the time being
> however disallow the creation of TLD's that exist in other namespaces.

Same question as above, however here at the point of the root zone
unavoidable, sadly:
How do you plan with conflicts? That is one of your peers or peer's
peers registering a new TLD that is already in use by you.

In fact with the arpa TLD such a conflict is already in place.

If you value the freedom to register a new TLD so much, you also must
accept that your peers will register TLDs without pre-registration
coordination with you. At best such a pre-registration coordination
would be to inform you, however never asking for permission.

I strongly recommend both you and OpenNIC to have a protocol for such a
case ready before peering, keeping in mind that such a conflict already
exists.


> 
> Do you have a rate limiting system to block DDoS attacks?
> 
> We do not at this time but it has been suggested to us in the
> alternative DNS community and we do plan on implementing one soon.
> 
> How do domain registrations work?
> 
> While the website's in development, [...]


Here is another question from me:
How is it ensured to be a long term project with long term availability
considering man power as well as funding.

Please do not get me wrong here, I truly believe that a few people can
run something big for a long time. However based on the history of
OpenNIC we know that people like to start new TLDs, but before the year
ended they are gone for one or another reason. Leaving the TLD defunct,
to be cleaned up by others.

To me "with no money, no servers, no nothing" smells like "with no
effort" which again smells like "with no responsibility". However
responsibility is needed when running (read: including non-technical
aspects such as management) infrastructure for others.


> Thank you all for reading,

Thank you for writing.


Looking forward to our reply.

With best regards,

-- 
Philipp Schafft,
erster Vorsitzender des Fellig e.V.
chairman of Fellig e.V.