I've heard enough horror stories lately (including[1]) that I'm considering moving a container registry off of a cctld. Container registries for whatever reason use .io by convention (docker.io, gcr.io, ghcr.io) so our public-facing registry does too, but I've been thinking that it's not worth the risk. .io is probably safer than most just because of how load-bearing it's become, though.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bg9XUEM82E

The Wikipedia entry on the .io TLD is interesting [1].

The .io TLD is assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territories, and there's currently an ongoing international legal dispute over whether the territories even exist, or they just belong to Mauritius. If the U.N. "wins" the .io domain would be slated for removal (technically).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.io

I can't imagine .io would ever be removed. if anything, it'll be categorized like .org or .com if it loses its geographic justification.

But aren't two letter TLD's reserved for country codes?

There will definitely be complaints if we colonize Jupiter's moons but the .io TLD has been commandeered by open source projects.

There are um, significant challenges to colonising Io.

It’s 400 active volcanoes to start with, in a body the size of Earth’s moon.

If we could tap its flux tube for energy though—- now that’d be cool.

> There are um, significant challenges to colonising Io.

What about Europa (.eu)?

> What about Europa (.eu)?

.eu is already the ccTLD if the European Union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.eu

Yes, I was referring to the grandparent's comment about Jupiter moons and .io that can't be used. Odd wording from my side.

Ok grampa, let's use DNS. Should we all type code out by hand as well?

not really how it works but your imagination is healthy.

There's precedent. The .su (Soviet Union) ccTLD is still around. It takes registrations at the second level and is open to registrations from anyone regardless of nationality.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su

There are some examples https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.yu

But we got .rs and .me in exchange. The world just wants to maximize domain hacks :)

And there is a lot of precedent for removing ccTLDs for countries that no longer exist, regardless of what is using them, e.g. East Germany, USSR etc.

.su still alive. Given it's controlled by Russia and widely used for scams I wouldn't recommend going to any site registered in that domain necessarily, but it has not been removed and likely won't be anytime soon.

Thank you, I stand corrected :)

Given that top-level domain does not have to be geographical, they can easily just keep it, just somebody else would be making money from it.

You’re hoping .io is safer than most. It’s not exactly operated by a big or stable country. Ownership could change and the new owners could be arbitrarily capricious.

Yep, that's a fair point. I do think that the more popular ccTLDs are probably slightly safer than less popular ones all else being equal because there is more riding on not “killing the golden goose”, but stability of the country (or territory) is also a factor.

The same applies to .UK, should Scottish independence succeed. If anything, that seems more likely than the UK giving up control of Diego Garcia.

> The same applies to .UK, should Scottish independence succeed

Northern Ireland exists and is still unfortunately a part of the UK. The UK would still be the United Kingdom of X and Northern Ireland even if Scotland leaves.

Even if NI leaves, it'd be the United Kingdom of England and Wales.

If Wales leaves, the United Kingdom of England?

No, the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland (parts) are united.

Wales was conquered in 1284 - the Kingdom of England includes Wales.

Like seeing someone's social media post of their breakfast, I'm happy these signals exist.

Well, looks like the Mali government disagree with you