Michael Dillon writes:
On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
On Tue, Jun 09, 1998 at 11:53:42PM -0400, Steve Sobol wrote:
.org was never meant as a domain for nonprofits; it was meant as a catchall to be used when your organization didn't fit into .com, .net, .edu or .gov.
Do you have a reference for that Steven? It doesn't match what I remember...
The MITRE Corporation registered mitre.org in 1985 and the Aerospace Corporation registered aero.org in 1987. This idea that .ORG was only for non-profit organizations is an example of historical revisionism propogated by people who were not there at the time the TLDs were created.
MITRE and Aerospace are both "Federal Contract Research Centers" and they don't fit neatly into either .com or .mil, so they ended up in .org which very definitely was the place for not-for-profits that aren't universities, or government agencies or strictly commercial enterprises. --Kent