Hi all (sorry for the cross posting, but as so many things and mis-information has been thrown around, I thought it would be best to reply to a few places), Recently (though not too recently, July 2nd actually), the "conseil d'etat" of France approved a rather extensive document with loads of info about computing in general and a few things about DNS in particular. The whole text of the documenbt (in french) can be found at: http://www.internet.gouv.fr/francais/textesref/rapce98/accueil.htm with the DNS bits found at: http://www.internet.gouv.fr/francais/textesref/rapce98/rap2.htm#5 There are some interesting recomendations there where the doc says that exploitation of ".gp" & ".mq" by private operators should be stopped whereas ".pf" & ".wf" should be allowed to continue (note: there are no domains delegated in ".pf" or in ".wf". .pf being under control of Inria, and .wf under control of the post-office). For whatever reason, the documnet doesn't mention ".gf" for French Guyanne (also a french DOM like Guadeloupe & Martinique, with a local ISP handling registrations there, and the local companies are getting the domains that they want/need ) or ".re" for Reunion (another french TOM, but with no registrations. It's delegated to Inria... notice a pattern?) As far as I know, nobody has asked for any removal from the root of ".gp" and/or ".mq". That (as happens quite often) is just information intoxication by Jim Fleming. So we can drop this thread of gp & mq getting removed from the root for now... With regards to the ITU confusing local & global matters (reported by Einar), the ITU has nothing to do with this report of France, it just happened that Bob Shaw (who happens to be from the ITU) forwarded the link to a list, presumably when he stumbled across it, and I imagine its because he found it interesting (the DNS part). In respect to IANA not being diligent in delegating TLDs, about 10 years ago no government gave a damn about this internet-thing and just let people get on with it. The policy that IANA has always followed about ccTLDs is to not get involved. The fact that countries come and go, and that internal politics change cannot be blamed to IANA. Another bit of intoxication by Jim Fleming is that some TLDs are being managed by people who do not reside in the country described (and reside in Texas or wherever). The policy for the initial delegation of a TLD is that the admin contact has to reside in the country/area/region. That policy has been followed. The fact that some admins get/want/request/hire help or whatever from people who reside elsewhere doesn't seem to me like a problem. If the admin contact for Turkmenistan prefers to have ".tm" run by people in the UK, that's his prerogative (as long as the government of Turkmenistan doesn't complain, and thus designate a different admin contact). IANA chose to use ISO-3166 as a base for the "country-code" TLD's. This was probably not a perfect choice, but it's a long way from being a BAD choice. IANA (as itself has admitted) is not in the business of defining what is or what isn't a country. To be honest the actual concept of "country" is something pretty vague. You have Scotland Wales and England as countries, but the UN doesn't have one seat for each (just one -a veto seat- for the UK). Most of the countries of the EU had more or less accepted one of the ex-Yugoslavia fragments as a new country: Macedonia. Greece decided it woudln't recognize it because it had a province under the same name (lots of convoluted things later and now the country has a long name with the word Macedonia in it). Is Corea one or two countries (north and south). Are Tibet and Taiwan part of China or not? What about Hong-Kong? What about countries that split up or join. When does a one-country-territory become a two-country-territory? Areas that some countries recognize as countries are not recognized by others. What about border disputes? Western Sahara? East Timor? Quebec? All of this is pure and simply POLITICS. There is no "universal" country-recognizer that all governments accepta as valid. Creating ANOTHER system of recognizing countries (which will obviously have different opinions and become highly political) is just asking for trouble. The ISO-3166 list is widely regarded (though not universally so by any means) as a valid system to be able to use to assign *codes* to regions/countries/areas. These regions/countries/areas normally get added in there by direct request of a government (here it goes a bit in circles...). MQ/GP/WF/PF/GF/RE and FX where *all* added at the request of the French government. In other words, they are there BECAUSE the french government asked ISO to add them (check it out). Recently, the french government has asked to remove FX from the list, and I believe the latest ISO-3166 list has dumped it. France doesn't want ".fx" in ISO-3166, so they asked and had it removed. In the same manner, ".fx" has been removed from the IANA roots (because France DIDN'T WANT IT IN THERE). If people have a problem about what countries/territories have or don't have a working TLD, take it up with their governments. If you want New York to have its own ".ny" then get the USA government to ask for ".NY" to be entered into ISO-3166 and take it from there, don't start bumping IANA for not having a certain code for a certain area. As far as all of this concerns my area (I live in Guadeloupe, and the provider I work at operates in both Guadeloupe and Martinique), to be honest I don't know what will happen in the next 6 months. Then again none of us know what will happen in the next 6 months wrt "traditional" ccTLDs in general, IP assignments and IANA. A good bet would probably be "business as usual", with some organisational changes and some formalisation of structures. I know that providers operating in Guadeloupe & Martinique are happy with how things are being done. I know that companies and infrastructure (libraries, airports, local port, local government etc) in Guadeloupe & Martinique are happy with how things are being done. I know that Guadeloupe and Martinique are proud of their "particularity" and don't feel just as French as (for example) Paris. French yes, but with a difference... (If you go to St. Martin, an island which is in the Caribbean and is half Dutch, half French, with the French part being a province of Guadeloupe, you'll actually find that the language they speak is English!!! with French -despite being the "official" language- very often not being even understood). What I ask is that if everyone here in Guadeloupe & Martinique is happy with how things are being done, nobody is getting rich out of this, all providers are in agreement (even though in other areas these same providers are at each outhers throats because they are competitors), then why change the status-quo? As a side note, I'd like to add that as yet, nobody from the government in France mainland has even tried to get in touch (phone, email, letter, fax) with me or any of the admin contacts for either ".gp" or ".mq" to ask/say/announce/inform/get informed about what is going on with these two TLDs, so I think it would be a bit bizarre to say the least if they suddenly "vanished". If one looks a little further, one will see that given the current political situation, the status of Guadeloupe and Martinique will probably soon change to be similar to that of French Polinesia and Wallis And Futune, so if TLDs are allowed there, they might as well be left here... Having said that, despite my disagreement with it, if the French government decides to eliminate/redelegate ".gp" and/or ".mq", then that is something they are completely in their right to do, just in the same way that if tomorrow they decide to shut down ".fr", they have the right to do it. They *are* sovereign here in Guadeloupe and in Martinique. Yours, John Broomfield. GP & MQ NIC. -------- Logged at Mon Sep 14 21:45:11 MET DST 1998 ---------