"William X. Walsh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>It has been shown that a registry with well over 200,000 registered
>names can be operated offering names for free (and indeed providing
>additional services other than just domain delegation, including url
>redirection, dynamic dns, etc, even email services, not to mention
>the number of mailing lists they operated for public benefit) on a
>very limited budget funded by limited advertising revenue on the
>website and donations/sponsorships and with totally volunteer
>staffing. And this was a relatively un-cordinated effort (and it was
>this uncordination that ended up being their downfall).
>With better management, all the senior staff could of been paid full
>time, and again, with still offering names for free, and collecting
>only small fees for enhanced services.
I could offer other reasons for ml.org's downfall. For example, the
advertising model for ISP services has shown to be less successful
than the subscription model. A local ISP (biggernet) that funded its
operation primarily on advertising went out of business recently. It
was also my understanding that much of ml.org's problems had to do
with hardware failures. I could speculate that more reliable (but
expensive) hardware, and a full-time staff of system and software
support (not to mention better management) would have kept them
going longer. But they would have had to charge for registrations,
because the money from advertising and sponsorships wasn't enough.
Another example -- the biggest registry (NSI) did not seem to be able
to survive on the "sponsorship" of the US taxpayers ...
At any rate, since the registry business is still in its infancy, I
guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.
--gregbo
