Why would they even want to close it? It is probably close to 0 cost tot hem. Or am I wrong?

It works differently than pretty much every other TLD, which means it's different code paths to support.

Many registrars don't support the unique 3rd level domain setup for .name, so it can be hard to find registrars that properly support it.

There's also an associate email redirect service, which is unique to .name and probably costs money to run and maintain.

It's probably easier to support, and more valuable to sell second level .name domains.

Pretty terrible that they were considering just dropping tens of thousands of customer registrations however.

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charcircuit 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How is it different than others like .co.jp or .ne.jp?

	▲	lambda 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Those ones have a fixed list of second level domains. .name was something where you could register a two part domain, picking both the third and second level, to represent your first and last name.

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seattle_spring 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> It works differently than pretty much every other TLD, which means it's different code paths to support.

but I was told that AI has made code obsolete and free

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swiftcoder 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It has weird interactions with some modern browser features. For example domain isolation doesn't apply between subdomains of the same TLD, so john.smith.name and drew.smith.name don't get isolation in naive implementations.

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troyrollo an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The public suffix list is a stupid hack that should be replaced by formal protocols allowing boundaries to be defined by either DNS entries, or a file on the web server.

	▲	JoshTriplett 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I personally think the public suffix list should be replaced by zero sharing even amongst subdomains, and if you want to talk between x.y.example.org and example.org you can use CORS just like any other cross-domain request.

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OkayPhysicist 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The real problem is that we'd have to add a wildcard to the public suffix list. That's it.

The public suffix list is the big list of all the URL suffixes that should not imply shared ownership of all their subdomains. For example the line

com

says "XYZ.com" and "ABC.com" should not be assumed to be controlled by the same entity.

Problem is, all 1st level domains registered to the .name TLD should be added to the list, and that's a lot of domains. The correct answer, IMO, would be to add a wildcard

*.name

but that would involve updating all the code that relies on the public suffix list to support said wildcard.

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toast0 2 hours ago | parent [-]

*.name isn't a good solution either, because the vast majority of registrations are at the second level.

If you want to do it properly, you really do need to include all of the second level domains that have more than one third level registrant. And update that periodically as domains expire... there might be three registrants under .example.name today, but if they all (or all but one) stop paying, example.name is no longer a public suffix and it should be removed.

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OkayPhysicist 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Having "no cookies shared between subdomains" as a restriction on the entire TLD isn't completely beyond the pale. There are other TLDs that have restrictions, like HTTPS being required for .dev

	▲	toast0 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Having it imposed on existing registrants after the fact really is beyond the pale, IMHO. It'd be one thing if it was there since the beginning, like https for .dev, but it would probably break existing sites if you add it after the fact.

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tylergetsay 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

wouldn't that be a problem with a lot of other domains? like locality domains

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timeinput 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It definitely is. <ingress>.k8s.<mydns>.com regularly confuses what password I want to use if I have different authentication per ingress. More commonly if I run something else at <name>.<mydns>.com firefox and chrome are both happy to offer up my password for <other service>.<mydns>.com.

Closed. Wont fix.

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OkayPhysicist 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We solve that problem with the public suffix list. The problem is there's a lot of .name domains, each of which would need to be added to the list.

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mixdup 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

yes, but other locality domains are fairly static and well-known

.co.uk wouldn't have the same problem because everyone knows that combo is a TLD in and of itself. with a seemingly infinite possible combinations of blah.name that could be a TLD itself, or, might just be a subdomain of .name, it gets really weird

	▲	toast0 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> with a seemingly infinite possible combinations Verisign claimed approximately 22,000 third level domains [1] in July 2026. I don't see an estimate of the number of shared second level domains, but it's finite. The current public suffix list includes 10414 names [2]; so at maximum, the list would approximately triple in size --- not ideal, but feasible. Edit: another post [3] claims approximately 2000 second levels names with multiple registrations; that's only a 20% increase in size for the existing list, which is again a lot, but feasible. There's some more specific data in an issue for the suffix list [4], that shows there were nine second level domains with multiple registered names underneath them, one of which might all be the same registrant (domain.name)... Nine would be totally doable, if the request came from Verisign... [1] https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/consensus-policies/fessen... [2] including some with wildcards, re: your other post [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50446780 [4] https://github.com/publicsuffix/list/issues/2306

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clickety_clack 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My thoughts also, but maybe they can make more from a few sites like baby.name than they can from personal domains.

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nikanj 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There would be great money to be made if you could auction off domain.name, instead of being stuck just getting $20 per year because some geezer registered his.domain.name.