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Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

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Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#21

Post by cjslep »

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…

Agree. Very naive. A 10% increase forever versus 10 year temporary stay of prices for some lucky few who manage to opt out.

10 is pretty small compared to forever.

I'll take the guaranteed 10% nest egg until retirement, please.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#22

Post by lioeters »

> So if we take Ethos at their word, they should be just as good a steward for .org as the Internet Society has been

Sigh.. I'm guessing the author is/was not aware of the serious conflict of interest among the decision-makers and private stake holders who passed through the revolving doors of IS, ICANN, PIR, Ethos.

Voting with such naivete, especially underestimating the greed of a for-profit organization, is not being a good steward. They've let down the public in this decision.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#23

Post by jawns »

> So if we take Ethos at their word

It is unfortunate that we have a business culture where to take someone at their word is not only naive but so reckless that the duped gets most of the blame rather than the duper.

And yet, here we are. This is the reality. Taking a private equity firm "at their word" is so foolish that it's hard to believe the author isn't being disingenuous.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#24

Post by tobltobs »

> This transaction will put that bigger mission on a solid footing

I don't understand how that should be true. Either Ethos would have too pay too much or Ethos would have to be able to run this business more cost effective. Both sounds questionable.

> While it's true that running .org provided a relatively steady income stream, ... > Establishing a more diverse portfolio of investments will allow us to have more predictable revenue over time.

Relatively steady sound pretty predictable to me. It will be interesting to see who from the inner circle will benefit from those future "investments".

> Even in the worst case, ... 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.

That is wrong: "Registry Operator shall offer registrars the option to obtain domain name registration renewals at the current price ... for periods of one (1) to ten (10) years at the discretion of the registrar, but no greater than ten (10) years."

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#25

Post by mirekrusin »

"(...) what Ethos themselves have said about their intentions (...)" means nothing. They can change their mind, put new directors in a month that will have different opinions etc. What's important is what they can legally do and how incentives are structured. Giving monopoly to private equity and expecting good things to happen is a joke.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#27

Post by Tharkun »

So...how much does it cost to run gTLD these days? Perhaps the time is right to set up a non-profit to run one at actually affordable prices, instead of the current ripoff and the future .org price increases.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#28

Post by mod50ack »

I'm a .org domain user. My email is a .org, my website is a .org. It's [my name].org. I've registered through 2029 now. Hopefully by then this whole nonsense has passed. Honestly domain names have been handled very poorly over the past 10 years, between this and the ridiculous gTLD system. They are just becoming super-expensive vanity items for corporations to get nice redirects.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#29

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

What a fucking moron!

1. No, 26$ is obviously not a sane, let alone a reasonable price for a domain registration. For comparison, you can register .de for 2. The price increase is capped at only 10% per year? Are you fucking kidding me? Do you seriously not have a clue how exponential growth works? .org has existed for 34 years, if you add another 34 years of increases of "only" 10%, you are at 255$ per year. Or, as he himself calculated, it's more than doubling the price in ten years, which would be just crazy.

3. "They promised they'd be good!" ... seriously? You seriously can not see the problem with a transaction where a profit-seeking entity obviously explicitly avoids actually promising anything (that is: making any of those "promises" legally binding)? After all, it is possible to actually promise all those things in a meaningful way, that's what the legal system is for.

4. "Give back to the .org community through a Community Enablement Fund" ... or in other words: Appropriate charitable donations where the donors have already decided what causes they should go to and redistribute them to their liking. Can anyone really be too stupid to see through this and be in a position to make such a decision?

5. "While it's true that running .org provided a relatively steady income stream, it effectively staked most of our revenue on a single business, and required a certain amount of our resources to be spent managing that business, distracting from the broader mission." ... WTF? And running it in the future will not require any resources? Does this guy not understand basic financial math either? Like, if you buy a business, you pay for expected profits, i.e., after you you have subtracted expected expenses, i.e., if you sell a business, you still "pay" for all the future expenses? Selling a business does not magically create money, it only shifts the cash flow to the present day. The only way selling a business can increase your cash flow is if the buyer increases prices or reduces costs.

It's all so obviously from the bullshitting playbook you can hardly believe anyone would actually believe any of these "arguments" to be of any value, when the path to actually guaranteeing all of these things that we are supposed to just believe is so obvious.

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