[tottenhm]

I think it's fair to see private equity as red-flag, and I feel ideologically aligned with the folks raising the alarm here. OTOH, the concerns raised include a lot of speculation (in the form of "could do bad" or "has the power to do bad"), and that's also a red-flag.

It's interesting to compare ISOC's blog (https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2019/11/the-internet-so...) and the followups like EFF's blog (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/nonprofit-community-st...) and SaveDotORG (https://savedotorg.org). They touch on a lot of similar themes of community and transparency - which, on paper, makes it sound like there's some meeting-ground.

As an outsider to the discussion, questions would be:

1. What are some specific problems facing the ".org" registration process for which capital/investment would be helpful? (Obviously, there's no perfect answer. But as an outsider, it looks like ".org" registration already works about as well as anywhere else, so one needs some examples to animate the problem.)

2. Would any of these folks care to improve their engagement/trust with each other? Talking more specifics about "Stewardship Council" and "Community Enablement Fund" might help. Or is some reason for bad blood?

3. What kind of track record does this private-equity shop have? Have they worked with other non-profit or socially-oriented endeavors? Maybe some founders/staff/customers can give some positive or negative testimonials?

[cannonedhamster]

They lied to get price caps removed on .org and then sold it amongst themselves to profit. I'm not sure how you trust people that start with a lie. Look into the history of how shady this really was.

[tottenhm]

Yeah, this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21612033 links to an article on the Register which gives a lot more substance to the concerns/reactions. That deeper story helps to show where the mistrust comes from.

From the peanut gallery, it looks like the ball is in ISOC's+Ethos' court to demonstrate their good faith as stewards...

[dogecoinbase]

the concerns raised include a lot of speculation (in the form of "could do bad" or "has the power to do bad"), and that's also a red-flag.

I'm not really sure how to address the idea that we shouldn't attempt to understand and interpret what things happening now might mean for the future.

[ohashi]

I saw this logic coming from a lot of people trying to push these changes through. They've been good so far, we should just trust them. They stick their heads in the sand and pretend we don't need rules because organizations, people, societies follow norms and that's enough. Until someone shits all over them, which is why we make rules in the first place. This whole nothing bad has happened yet, we shouldn't consider a bad outcome as a real possibility is ignorant and dangerous. The same people who if you look at ICANN mailing lists are still trying to play both sides, with whataboutism type arguments in an attempt to discredit people against .ORG being sold to a private equity company. I've dug into those people a bunch too, they're pretty much all connected to registry interests (https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2019/06/24/the-case-for-regula...)

[jimmaswell]

A downed power line or gas leak only "could" do bad, but that's not a reason to dismiss them.