rogue TLD's (was Re: [geeks] Screw Verisign/NETSOL move your .com .org .net now)

[R. Lonstein]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2002 at 01:55:26PM -0500, alex j avriette wrote:
    [snip]
> sometimes when people bitch about the lack of domains
> available, why they dont just register their own TLD with
> their own server and give it out to relevant folks? I
    [snip]
> i cant see how named can be so hard to configure that more
> people dont use it in this fashion.
    [snip]

Given the ICANN situation, it isn't far off. It isn't the technical
limitation, it's the organizational limitation- people are accustomed
to the NetSol root servers, nearly everyone uses them and getting
sufficient people to change their habits to make it ordinary is hard.
Sure, you can set it up and have your TLD club with a few friends but
try and get other people to use it.

A similar thing has quickly happened with PKI and the CAs. Browsers have
CA certs for the big digital certificate vendors- these are people
selling a hole in the ground, as far as I'm concerned- and a select
group of software vendors and people can't be easily convinced into
importing a new CA cert. There is no difference between a $500-$800
server cert from Verisign and a free one generated using OpenSSL. I've
even seen this with developers who should know better but are resistant
to using an in-house CA because it's not Verisign.

Feh.

ObLinks:
http://www.alternic.org/
http://www.opennic.unrated.net/
http://www.open-rsc.org/

- Ross