Talk:.org

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Would it be useful to have a complete list of all countries/territories that use the .org.xx system for [non-profit] organizations? I'm sure that there are more countries that do so, not just UK, China, Mexico, and NZ. --seav 12:10, Aug 6, 2003 (UTC)

You can add Thailand and Japan for sure, only that it is .or.th and .or.jp respectively. andy 12:12, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Open source generalization

"...most .org domains do not qualify for this generalization." -if true, why is it worth mentioning in the first place? mtz206 04:10, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Please add some info about ads on .org sites

Ive been to so many .org websites with heavy advertising. For example: phpnuke.org has so many pop ups that my pop up blocker gets overwhelmed and cannot handle all of them. Cmon if you have a .org why does it have SO many ads. Aceofspades 14:54, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Advertising is a valid way to collect money to non-profits. This projects need money to buy hardware, pay full time employers, etc. And .org TDL are not only for non-profits. -- EduardoPadoan

[edit] Unfortunately used for porn as well

http://www.m3l.org/

Why unfortunately? Is porn too unpure to .org? :P -- EduardoPadoan

[edit] Questionable history

"In the US, the .org TLD is mostly associated with non-profit organizations, due to the TLD's early adoption by the open-source movement ..."

I doubt the accuracy of this statement (unsupported by citation), which states (or at least implies) that the use of .org by nonprofit organizations was inspired by the open-source movement. I suspect that the use of .org by nonprofits was independent of the open-source movement and may even have preceded the rise of the open-source movement as a significant cultural influence.

Does anybody have an accurate history?

68.73.52.164 00:41, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's a misleading statement that should be changed. The actual history is that the original structure of the domain name system allocated .org to miscellaneous organizations that didn't fit in the other categories (see RFC 1591), which basically meant nonprofits / not-for-profits that were not governmental or educational. This predated the open source movement. When open source software started becoming popular in the 1990s, such projects often used .org domains to indicate their noncommerciality, causing some degree of association of that TLD with the open source movement, but it's fairly weak; there are of course many other kinds of organizations with .org domains and some open source projects that (illogically, in my opinion) use .com domains (possibly indicating over-infestation with marketing types). *Dan T.* 00:56, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I remember at some point .org was opened up to registration by anyone, whereas previously you had to be approved in order to use it (and it was generally only approved for non-profits). Anyone know the details of this? anthony 20:52, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

The way I recall it (and I worked at an ISP in the mid-to-late 1990s and was involved in submitting domain registrations for various clients), at first domain registrations were free and were all "vetted" for the registrants fitting the appropriate categories. Then the then-monopoly (for .com, .net, .org, and at that time .edu also) Network Solutions got governmental approval to start charging for registrations (where previously they just got a flat government grant per year to do the registrations), which was a major step towards domain registration becoming a saleable commodity instead of a public service. .com was the first to go unrestricted, as NetSol stopped all pretense of checking the appropriateness of registrants there. For a while, .org and .net continued to be restricted to some extent, with the NetSol people sometimes rejecting registrations that didn't seem appropriate, but eventually they too were made unrestricted. .edu remained tightly restricted and was ultimately spun off to a different, nonprofit registry. .org was also later spun off, but remained unrestricted (it's much harder to add restrictions to a formerly unrestricted domain than to go the other direction). *Dan T.* 21:05, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Can Comanies use an .org ?

It is not specified in this article if companies can use a .org domain. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 91.164.85.97 (talk) 21:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC).

Registration is unrestricted, so anybody can use it; nobody enforces any restrictions, and the registry actually suggests that companies register the .org version of their names both for name protection and for possible use for related foundations or charitable use. Tradition and RFC documents hold that .org is supposed to be for noncommercial organizations, but this is not a mandatory rule. *Dan T.* 21:07, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] assembler directive

I hear org/.org/ORG a very common assembler directive, apparently used in many assemblers to move code to some specific location --24.201.100.166

Yes. We should probably have a disambiguation page at Org or ORG, as there are a number of other meanings too (e.g., the Open Rights Group, and orgs in Power Rangers). --Zundark 08:27, 26 May 2007 (UTC)