Public Interest Registry, the non-profit organization managing the .ORG Top Level Domain (TLD) has been sold to investment firm Ethos Capital.
PIR was established by the Internet Society in 2002 to manage and operate the .ORG domain. Since then, .ORG has risen to become the largest purpose-driven domain used by millions of organizations and others to achieve their online goals.
[...]“This is an important and exciting development for both the Internet Society and Public Interest Registry,” said Andrew Sullivan, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Internet Society, the organization that established Public Interest Registry. “This transaction will provide the Internet Society with an endowment of sustainable funding and the resources to advance our mission on a broader scale as we continue our work to make the Internet more open, accessible and secure – for everyone.
Obviously this comes as a complete and utter surprise to everybody, a couple of months after ICANN eliminated the .org price cap despite overwhelming opposition.
All of PIR’s domain operations and educational initiatives will continue, and there will be no disruption of service or support to the .ORG Community or other generic top-level domains operated by the organization.
It looks like all parties involved wisely decided not to comment on any expected price increases though.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by bradley13 on Friday November 15 2019, @05:17AM (8 children)
Pretty much by deginition: a non-profit should be nearly worthless, since they cannot ever make money.
Yeah, naive. A lot if non-profits exist to enrich their top management, to launder money, or for other unfortunate reasons. Which is it in this case?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday November 15 2019, @05:47AM
Well, at least if they want to register PIR.COM, it seems to be available for a measly $75k.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @08:54AM (2 children)
This is simply not true. The main difference between a non-profit and a for-profit organization is how surplus assets are distributed, not whether or how much money they make.
For example, a for-profit might disburse a surplus to shareholders as dividends, but a non-profit cannot do this.
(Score: 1) by webnut77 on Friday November 15 2019, @06:02PM (1 child)
Towards the end of a non-profit's fiscal year, if they have a surplus, they can just give the CEO and members of the Board a bonus.
Bingo! No profit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @09:59PM
Disbursements that personally enrich the executive staff or BoD that are contingent on revenue or profit are one of the few things non-profits cannot do. In addition, PIR is a registered support organization of unclassified type, which limits their use of the money even more than the standard non-profit rules to:
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday November 15 2019, @01:02PM (3 children)
They can have huge revenue, huge budgets, and wield huge power; they just can't pay dividends to public stockholders, so instead of stock option incentives they have to pay higher salaries.
In theory, in the old days, the only way to raise capital was shareholders (and bondholders, long story) to build yer railroad. Now a days all capex is done by nationalized orgs, the national railroad has the govt pay directly for choo choo engines, for example. Meanwhile the businesses outsource everything "as a service" and gig economy and cloud, so they need no capital and thus need no shareholders... Would not be surprised to see a long term trend of a lot more of the economy made up of non-profits and b-corporations. Not next week, duh, but over the course of this century.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @03:27PM (2 children)
"instead of stock option incentives they have to pay higher salaries."
I work at a non-profit and my salary is 1/2 of what it was at a for-profit.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 16 2019, @12:39AM
I work for this here for-profit (PBC) corporation and make not a damn thing except having a fun site to argue, troll, and make stupid jokes on. Guess it all just depends on the specific company.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @03:38AM
GP meant the execs.