Discuss mailing list

[Jeff Taylor <shdwdrgn AT sourpuss.net>]

From the previous thread, I believe we should have a discussion about 
TLD control.  When opennic gets quiet for a period, we seem to keep 
losing TLD admins.  There is also the issue of some TLDs which appear to 
still be responding, but nobody can get ahold of the admin to registered 
or update domains.

Just to remind everyone, I am the admin of NS2 and run the registrations 
for dyn, geek, gopher, indy, libre, oss, parody, pirate.  I wrote my 
software with this problem in mind, and all domain information is stored 
in LDAP which is mirrored on at least four different servers in various 
locations.  If I disappear, the data is preserved for others to pick up, 
and the schemas used are available is anyone else want to write their 
own registration software.  And yes, there are still bugs in my code.

So the discussion I want to have here is whether anyone else is 
concerned about the TLDs with no online registration path?  At the very 
least, there is no published record of who registered each domain, so 
opennic has no method of rebuilding a TLD if needed.  Is there any 
interest in consolidating ALL of the TLDs for registration from a single 
location?  The current setup would allow any T1 operator to administer 
domains under all of the TLDs.  We've even had the web code running from 
other locations in the past.  I just want to put this out as something 
to consider, a method to try and make it easier for everyone to maintain 
their domains.

On the other hand, Opennic is a *learning* project, so of course many 
people want to try running a TLD entirely on their own, which is why 
things are set up in the current manner.  We shouldn't discourage 
anyone's quest for knowledge.  The question is, which aspects of opennic 
should be wide-open, and which aspects should have a little stricter 
control?