VOICE YOUR SUPPORT OR SPREAD THE DOT spread the dot : status report  [ FILED UNDER: DOT » ORG » ANSWERS » ]

The Internet Multicasting Service and the Internet Software Consortium were one of eleven candidates who presented bids to ICANN to become the new .org TLD operator. ICANN's decision is scheduled for late August late September early October really soon now shortly after 8 October 2002 but we need your help...now!

UPDATE

The ICANN Final Evaluation was released on September 23. The IMS/ISC bid was unrated, a category below "marginal" and well below the coveted "highly qualified" rating garnered by VeriSign and the Signettes. Why, you might ask? Because we did not show a "demonstrated ability" to run a registry of "significant scale." Pardon us!? We respectfully disagree. Our rocket scientists estimate this little boondoggle will cost consumers $268 million over the next five years. Feel free to let ICANN know what you think.

Switch The Dot
The DNS should be run as a solid engineering effort in the public interest, not as another dot-com opportunity. If you want to support open registries, you can repoint your dot from our original spread the dot campaign to the new OpenReg at the ISC website:

Thanks! We appreciate all your support to date.

What Is OpenReg?
If the big kids won't let you play on their baseball field, one solution is to build your own. OpenReg is open source software for registries, produced by the Internet Software Consortium, the folks that brought you open source solutions for BIND and DHCP. Our goal is to shrink wrap the $1 billion/year so-called "Domain Name Industry" into something much smaller and sleeker.

If you want a reality check on OpenReg, we built a live mirror of .org and what the MIS boys call an Operational Test & Evaluation Environment (translation: test system). You can: test a .org domain name in our live mirror; add sample data to the OT&E testbed to test the RRP, Whois, and DNS components of our system; and, examine performance and availability of the system.

Our Fellow .Organisms:
An ICANN Preliminary Staff Report was released on August 19, which rated the IMS/ISC bid someplace between totally clueless and moderately brain-dead. Our response was a call to our fellow .organisms, and, in an effort to reach out to people who speak other languages, a getting-to-know-you presentation.

We want thank our fellow .organisms who voiced their support and spread the dot. One of the most gratifying things about working on the Internet is witnessing the spontaneous formation of true community. Again, thanks for all the dots!

PROJECTING THE DOT

Our crack task force of statisticians have concluded that by the year 2039 all Internet users will have expressed support for our bid. At this rate, an estimated 100% of the human population will be supporting our bid in the year 2058. With your help, anything is possible.* .P = dot population ( = earth population = internet population = .org population ) * This graph contains forward-looking projections based on our spread the dot campaign.

“Thanks for your support.” - bot For continued coverage of the IMS/ISC .org campaign, stay tuned to the org meme at IMS Signals.