Just posting a (crazy?) idea I had. Am after feedback, ideas, offer of interest/support/, being told it's an impossible idea and to drop it, and so on.

In a nutshell:

It costs $3000NZD+GST to become a registrar. The cost per domain is $1.50/month ($18/year) with a minimum monthly charge of $48 (which equates to 32 domains).

The question is: would it be viable, and would there be enough interest/support/volunteer labour to run a cooperative "run by geeks for geeks" style domain registrar for .NZ domains.

Possible ideas: get 34 geeks to each pay $100 to get the initial $3,375.00 (inc gst) to become a registar

Questions that would need answering:

• Is it open to the public, or geeks only (simply to do with labour needed to offer support)


• Do we have a formal structure, what would be a suitable one? Non-profit company, incorporated society etc


• Would the "people management" side of things just be too difficult


• Is there enough interest?


• What are the risks - financial, legal, other


• What is involved with the infrastructure side of things - could we afford to run say DNS as well


• Can we get support/donations from other organizations


• What roles would there be? Someone to manage finances, someone to oversee the whole project, some form of board (for the organization), tech support, system admins, programmers (to create management system to interface with SRS)


• Can we create an open source domain management system, or is there one we can adapt, to interface with the SRS


• How much infrastructure is needed to run the whole thing, can this be donated by members of the coop?

Links:
http://nz.coop/

http://www.nzrs.net.nz/rik/