• Aceticon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    28
    ·
    1 year ago

    It’s called a single-point of failure in Engineering.

    Funny enough it wasn’t even a technical one but a contractual one.

    Maybe there is some kind of lesson here on the risk of delegating critical structural elements to 3rd parties that rent rather than own that which they’re selling …

        • hypelightfly@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          More like, it’s less sketchy if you pay for a domain at all. .ml was free, what did they think was going to happen?

        • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          The issue here isn’t the registrar though right? It’s that the TLD is being repossessed by the government of the country it’s meant to be associated with.

          • KubeRoot@discuss.tchncs.de
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            10
            ·
            1 year ago

            I think the point is that a reputable registrar wouldn’t sell domains like these in the first place… But I’m not saying that’s actually the case :/

            • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              Governments are unpredictable. It’s not the registrar’s job to mitigate that unpredictability to their customers.

              • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                9
                ·
                1 year ago

                Idk, I feel like we’re only saying this because it’s Mali… If it were .US or .CN people would be like “well, duh”

                • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Every country gets to decide how tight of a grip they have on their TLD. Some sell it for some extra income (like Tuvalu) while others hang onto it for government or domestic use only

                  • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    2
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Yeah, and I’d say going with any of the ones that sell it or leave it free is a risk because you never know when their regime might change and the new one might want more of an official internet presence. Unless there’s a 2nd level domain it’s all under (like co.uk), you should assume they’ll want it back at some point. This could apply more to popular domains that some governments could see as free traffic if they reclaim them.

                • bill@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Not really. When you pay for .us domain you have it for a certain number of years. If the US tried to suddenly yank those back and violate the outstanding contracts for x number of years, there would most likely be lawsuits and an injunction from a federal judge blocking the action until there are hearings, etc. It would be a whole thing. If you simply couldn’t renew your .us domain anymore, that’s something you would know ahead of time and could plan for. It wouldn’t just vanish one day.

              • marmo7ade@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                4
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                Yes it is. The level of “unpredictability” varies greatly. And it is obvious which governments pose a higher risk.

      • Saik0A
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Indeed… you never really purchase a domain. It’s definitely more of a lease. And that’s any tld.

    • miles@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s called a single-point of failure in Engineering.

      For that instance, yes. For the whole of Lemmy, no. Everything else keeps on chugging along.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Indeed.

        Imagine if this had happenned to a centralized system like Reddit…

        • Takumidesh@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          A centralized system wouldn’t have this problem since the only reason they can’t just use another domain name is because of refederation. A great example of this happening is piracy websites, which notoriously get shutdown only to pop up five minutes later with a new domain.

          This is actually a critical flaw IMO in federated applications as a whole. Not being able to change domain names makes your entire platform (as an instance runner) tightly coupled to the initial decision you make when first setting up the instance.