Tell HN: Some tech companies use .so domains, despite no connection to Somalia | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Some tech companies use .so domains, despite no connection to Somalia

Hi. In Wikipedia it says .so domains are restricted to "Limited to institutions and organizations in Somalia, residents of Somalia, others who have a legitimate, clear and provable connection to Somalia".

So, do companies such as readme.so or Notion.so have some provable connection to Somalia, or they simply don't care?

Thanks

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Didn't it already happen with .io and .tv?

Do they explicitly exclude "foreigners" from registering?

I read that Tuvalo earns a good portion of their GDP from .tv domain sales.

Over the past couple years, .so has been pitched by Namecheap as a generic short TLD.

Try this: Search Namecheap for a random domain name. Scroll down a bit to see their list of suggestions. .so is always on the list, next to .cc and similar TLDs.

".so" is perhaps a little bit more clever-seeming. "Readme.so" implies "so... what?"

Anyway, the "country-based" TLD system is busted. People register whatever they want. Similarly, it used to be that you could only register a .org if you were a nonprofit or NGO, but those days have long since passed...

Besides, this is sanctioned by the Somali government. It gets them paid. Anguilla makes a ton of money from the .ai TLD.

Similarly, it used to be that you could only register a .org if you were a nonprofit or NGO, but those days have long since passed...

I have used .org and .net extensively since 1998 for my hobby sites. When did they force any checks on org? I have never received any warnings or statements suggesting I should only use it for a nonprofit. I have used .org for profit a few times without issue.

The .org extension is an open and unrestricted top-level domain meaning anyone can register it for any purpose including commercial activities. At worst using it for anything other than a nonprofit can lead to confusion or trust issues if the site is not obviously for profit.

wikipedia says...enough said

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