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.self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

hccf.onmy.cloud

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Re: .self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

#61

https://hccf.onmy.cloud/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/dot-self.... > Everyone entitled to a subdomain at no cost How are you going to pay for the (substantial) cost of running a TLD without registration fee revenue? Is this a loss leader for other services? Are you operating on a 100% donation model? > No parking, squatting, or reselling How do you plan to tell the difference between a parked/squatted domain and one in…

It's not clear whether they're actually talking about domains or subdomains there, which is a worrying sign from a potential registrar.

Re: .self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

#64
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

Re: .self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

#65

Good luck getting your outgoing emails accepted by Gmail and outlook.

We plan to operate a shared mail server than can be used by users of the domain and we will work to ensure it is trusted by imposing usage limits. We will assume that every endpoint in our domain is someone's personal homelab, meaning small-scale use. For large mailing campaigns and newsletters there are plenty of services to choose from that enable those but for just sending personal emails, it should work.

Re: .self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you needed a gTLD for this task why?

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…

.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 .self give me, as a reader, that .name or .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 .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.

Re: .self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

#68

https://hccf.onmy.cloud/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/dot-self.... > Everyone entitled to a subdomain at no cost How are you going to pay for the (substantial) cost of running a TLD without registration fee revenue? Is this a loss leader for other services? Are you operating on a 100% donation model? > No parking, squatting, or reselling How do you plan to tell the difference between a parked/squatted domain and one in…

> How are you going to pay for the (substantial) cost of running a TLD without registration fee revenue? Is this a loss leader for other services? Are you operating on a 100% donation model?

We plan on operating the domain as a public good and are actively seeking sponsors to help fund us. Think of it as a similar model to ISRG and LetsEncrypt.

> No parking, squatting, or reselling

Our rule of one person per subdomain will hopefully prevent this at scale, though it will admittedly be more difficult to examine any particular domain so closely. We may have to implement some type of heartbeat where the owner of said domain has to respond within a certain amount of time.

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