[riffraff]

please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is not really decentralized. It's a single authority that owns a namespace in namecoin and is giving out sub-names. It's decentralized in the same way a twitter account is.

[jnbiche]

No, you're wrong. It's entirely decentralized. Have a look at the spec: https://github.com/onenameio/onename

Anyone running a full Namecoin node (ie, anyone running Namecoin client) can register an identification.

OneName is providing a convenient web portal to this key-value store on Namecoin, so their business model is somewhat analogous to Blockchain.info's (or perhaps they have another business model in mind, who knows?).

[vertex-four]

Nobody can own namespaces. They're "just" acting as a middleman for buying names in Namecoin in a namespace they've defined themselves, but anyone could bypass them and buy their own names in that namespace.

The annoying thing is, we already have a namespace for identities, it's standardised and documented on the wiki. They came in and defined their own namespace for no good reason.