Why is .gov only for US government agencies?

Tue Oct 21 05:31:48 UTC 2014

On Oct 20, 2014 11:54 PM, "Doug Barton" <dougb at dougbarton.us> wrote:
>
> On 10/20/14 4:07 PM, shawn wilson wrote:
>>

>>
>> Do we really have any prior examples that are even .1 the size of the
>> usgov public system? Again, I'm not just referring to BIND and Windows
>> DNS (and probably some Netware 4 etc stuff) - this would be web, soap
>> parsers, email systems, vpn, and all of their clients (public,
>> contractor, and gov). Anything close to what y'all are talking about?
>
>
> Actually I think I could make a very convincing argument that GOV would
not be the most challenging problem of the 3 I mentioned, but I won't. :)
>

You're right. But, edu and gov might be a tie with some obsolete tech they
maintain that won't conform. But maybe not. As far as mil, I hold no
clearance and if I did, I couldn't discuss even their public infrastructure
(which AFAIK requires at least a public trust to work on). So I think
leading this discussion to just the issues with gov (and maybe edu - but
for some strange reason I have faith in them here) vs mil and edu as
well...?

> The question here is not, "Is it easy?" The questions are, "Is it the
right thing to do?" and "Will it get easier to do tomorrow than it would
have been to do today?"
>

No, the first question should be "is it possible" - we all seem to think
its possible in some timeframe (though I wonder about the legality of
changing active congressman's email). Next, is it the right thing - I'm
going to go with yes, it probably is. But the later question is basically
the cost benefit analysis - I'm just not sure if its worth it. And finally
your question about time:

> I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would have been easier
to do a decade ago, and 10 years from now it will be harder still.
>

Will it get easier/harder if we wait - I agree, it would've been easier 10
years ago and with the cheap IoT crap starting to come out (none that uses
DNS yet, but) its not going to get any easier. If y'all disagree with me
and feel there'd be a real benefit to doing this, the process should be
started now.