Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

circleid.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 316 posts

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#181

Post by PaulHoule »

wpietri wrote: post #57
Traster wrote: post #10

This author is just outright naive. >Even in the worst case, if Ethos considers dramatically increasing prices (which, to be clear, we do not expect them to do!), the Registry Agreement for .org requires a 6-month notice period during which domain owners can lock in a 10-year registration at pre-increase rates. This should seriously discourage Ethos from doing this, because it would take 10 years for the new high rat…

I think it's worse than naive. His two points are in impossible conflict. He wanted a pile of money for the Internet Society, enough to "secure that work's future". But the only way selling .org is worth a pile of money is if it gets extracted from nonprofits. With plenty of profits left over to feed the investors who put up the initial cash. If the Internet Society wanted to secure their future, they should have rai…

I don't think that "nonprofit" = "good".

See

https://newint.org/features/2005/10/01/keynote/

we might be better off if Oxfam's domain name was sold off to somebody else.

People who liked that "phenomenon of bullshit jobs" essay might think that "working for a nonprofit" is "meaningful", but people who work for non-profits frequently suffer from moral injury, get burned out, underpaid, and wind up questioning their values.

Back when I was involved in third-party politics and had many social entrepreneur friends I made my own decision that I don't give money to 501c(3) organizations, since they are a privileged class that doesn't have to pay taxes -- being a 501c(3) organization also means sticking to rules that ensure that you will be working on the symptoms of problems rather than the root causes.

Particularly in the developing world, people would benefit from for-profit organizations that are responsive to their needs as opposed to non-profits who work for rich donors and mindless governments.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#182

Post by astrodust »

simias wrote: post #52
Traster wrote: post #10

This author is just outright naive. >Even in the worst case, if Ethos considers dramatically increasing prices (which, to be clear, we do not expect them to do!), the Registry Agreement for .org requires a 6-month notice period during which domain owners can lock in a 10-year registration at pre-increase rates. This should seriously discourage Ethos from doing this, because it would take 10 years for the new high rat…

Yeah this is a frankly insane take for me. >For those who might be unfamiliar with the Internet Society, our mission is as follows: Nobody cares, that's utterly irrelevant as long as operating .org doesn't go against the Society's mission statement (which it clearly doesn't). By the author's own admission "While it's true that running .org provided a relatively steady income stream, it effectively staked most of our…

"As an organization the WWF staked most of our revenue on a single business. That's why we've acquired a controlling interest in Raytheon..."

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#183

Post by simias »

tptacek wrote: post #145
wpietri wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's worse than naive. His two points are in impossible conflict. He wanted a pile of money for the Internet Society, enough to "secure that work's future". But the only way selling .org is worth a pile of money is if it gets extracted from nonprofits. With plenty of profits left over to feed the investors who put up the initial cash. If the Internet Society wanted to secure their future, they should have rai…

Help me understand what you mean by "worse than naive" here. Richard Barnes isn't going to see a dollar of this money and wouldn't need it anyways. I understand people disagreeing with him, but, despite being automatically disinclined to extend good faith to anything published at CircleID, I don't understand where anyone derives bad faith from this piece. I thought it was tremendously useful, if only to understand wh…

>I thought it was tremendously useful, if only to understand what was in the minds of the people who unanimously voted to sell .ORG.

That felt more like a smokescreen than a true insight into the process. It's a lot of fluff and empty grandstanding while not really justifying the sale in any coherent way. The way I read it he's basically saying "being a registrar for .org is our biggest activity and one that gives us a steady and stable income but we also want to do other things, so we decided to get rid of that for some short-term gains".

If that's truly what was in the mind of the people who voted to sell they need to test the water supply in that building, there was clearly something messing with their reasoning skills.

If there's truly a grand master plan that makes sense behind all of that then they should share it. For now the only plan that makes any sense to me involves several thick layers of corruption.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#184

Post by astrodust »

danpalmer wrote: post #14

> Make .org domain names "accessible and reasonably priced for all", including limiting price increases to no more than 10% per year This immediately stuck out to me as a really bad deal. Rising with inflation, somewhere between 1 and 4% per year, would essentially keep prices stable. This is tricky when selling internationally, but roughly possible. Rising by 10% each year is significantly faster than inflation, and…

10% per year, so in 10 years it's 2.6x more, and 6.7x in 20 years.

That's way above the rate of inflation.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#185

Post by miles »

tzs wrote: post #164

I wonder what Network Solutions thinks of this? If you register a .org through them, they offer 100 year registration for $999. The registries do not allow a domain to be registered for more than 10 years in the future, so the way NS implements this is by initially registering it for 10 years for you, and then automatically registering an additional year each year. That only works out for NS if prices don't rise too…

Some thoughts on Network Solutions' 100 year offer:

The 100 year domain: legal or not? https://www.tnl.net/blog/2004/03/23/the-100-year-domain-lega...

100-Year Domain Renewals? https://yro.slashdot.org/story/04/03/23/0235244/100-year-dom...

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#186

Post by astrodust »

im3w1l wrote: post #108
danpalmer wrote: post #14

> Make .org domain names "accessible and reasonably priced for all", including limiting price increases to no more than 10% per year This immediately stuck out to me as a really bad deal. Rising with inflation, somewhere between 1 and 4% per year, would essentially keep prices stable. This is tricky when selling internationally, but roughly possible. Rising by 10% each year is significantly faster than inflation, and…

Changing domains is not easy, but if you bring up 20+ year horizons, then it is definitely viable to change domains to deal with rising costs.

What costs? They have to run some DNS and WHOIS servers, plus collect money.

This isn't rocket fusion, this is something every country, no matter how tiny, manages to deal with for their own national domain.

If they're in way over their heads maybe they should out-source components of it, but retain control over things like pricing.

Or, sure, sell it off. I'm sure nothing bad will happen like when .com went evil.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#188

Post by jiofih »

Judging by the numbers, you can guess they sold for somewhere in the $100m-$1B range. Hard to resist. And also known as corruption, when it comes to public services.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#190

Post by jmccorm »

It seems like a slap across the face that they offer as a defense a 10% increase which compounds annually. That isn’t a defense... it is a stunning illustration of the problem! Even the cable companies would be jealous (while their own customers are cutting the cord left and right).

Worse, 10%/year isn’t a contractual limitation; it is but a statement of “intent”. It is nothing short of malfeasance to have sold a non-profit’s operations without sufficient safeguards. And to a private equity firm? Outrageous incompetence if not criminal in action.

His article doesn’t justify the transaction or allay reasonable concerns. In fact, he seems to be presenting the case for why this transaction is crooked if not criminal!

Post reply on HN