Here's my understanding of the histroy of .oz:
A long time ago in a place far far away there once lived a happy
DNS server. It had an easy life living in a University and didn't
have to work too hard, but it was important work and it felt
good about itself. Melbourne was a nice place to live and it
liked it's name - munnari. It sounded neat.
One day Munnari met a new freind, Robert. He didn't look like
all the other poeple in that he never ever wore any shoes on his
feet but he was a nice kind man and new how to treat a nameserver
correclty.
"Munnari" said Robert, "you need to be munnari.oz" so Robert
typed on the console - "clickity click, tap a thwacka whap klickity
klick" said Munnari and Roberts fingers flew over the keyboard.
"Hello, I'm munnari.oz" said Munnari, "and I like my new name".
"Good" said Robert, and they both went back to work.
The years went by. Both of them had been working diligently
and had earned great respect. One day Robert walked up to Munnari
and "said, well, we lost. You can't be munnari.oz any more
and in fact .oz has to go.
Munnari was very upset to hear this. "But why?" he exclaimed?
Robert sadly explained that there was a list of country codes
that we'd be using for DNS names and Australias was really au
not oz.
"But Robert, I read usenet, I know that" said Munnari, "and the
English have been using .UK just like we've been using .oz and
their official country domain is .UK and only the Queen uses
.gb. What's up with that?"
"I don't know Munnari" said Robert. All I know is they won't
talk to me about .oz and I am supposed to set up .au. So,
tell you what, we'll move .oz to .oz.au and the rest of them
can live in .com.au or .net.au but we'll always have our
little piece of .oz, just me and you"
"Hmm?" said Munnari. "Did you say someting".
"Sorry Munnari, I didn't you hear me"?
"Oh, yes, I suppose" said Munnari, "it's just that
I'm listening to the next room where they're taking
all of the things we do and calling it Melbourne IT
and golly, they plan on buying some big houses, don't
they?
I've been asked to add .oz to the ORSC root zone and one
of the few things all rsc's agree on is to stay out of
that two letter space completely.
This appears to be different though.
I've aksed two of the strongest opposed to adding 2 letter
domains - Stef and The Internet Namespace Consortium (TINC).
They're both in favour of it, based apparantly on a gradfathering idea.
I'm for the idea. Unless there is a compelling reason why we shouldn't
do this I'd like to add .oz.
Best regards,
Richard Sexton
--
"He can't even run his own life, I'll be damned if he'll run mine"
