Proposal to offer *.social.coop as an unofficial TLD/domain name for social cooperatives

Here is the the .coop "Statement of Co-operative Identity" for reference:

Definition - A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointlyowned and democratically-controlled enterprise.

Values - Co-operatives are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility, and caring for others.

Principles - The co-operative principles are guidelines by which co-operatives put their values into practice.
1st Principle: Voluntary and Open Membership - Co-operatives are voluntary organizations, open to all persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibilities of membership, without gender, social, racial, political, or religious discrimination.
2nd Principle: Democratic Member Control - Co-operatives are democratic organizations controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting their policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected representatives are accountable to the membership. In primary co-operatives members have equal voting rights (one member, one vote), and co-operatives at other levels are also organized in a democratic manner.
3rd Principle: Member Economic Participation - Members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their co-operative. At least part of that capital is usually the common property of the co-operative. Members usually receive limited compensation, if any, on capital subscribed as a condition of membership. Members allocate surpluses for any or all of the following purposes: developing their co-operative, possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible; benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the co-operative; and supporting other activities approved by the membership.
4th Principle: Autonomy and Independence - Co-operatives are autonomous, self-help organizations controlled by their members. If they enter into agreements with other organizations, including governments, or raise capital from external sources, they do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their members and maintain their co-operative autonomy.
5th Principle: Education, Training and Information - Co-operatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their co-operatives. They inform the general public - particularly young people and opinion leaders - about the nature and benefits of cooperation.
6th Principle: Co-operation Among Co-operatives - Co-operatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement by working together through local, national, regional, and international structures.
7th Principle: Concern for Community - Co-operatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies approved by their members.

My apologies - I linked to the wrong policy document. Here is the .coop third level domain policy:
http://www.coop/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/third-level_domain_policy-1.pdf

I flag this up simply becuase a few years back there was discussion about registering the name sheffield.coop and using sub-domains to support/point to various cooperatives in that city. I wasn't personally involved in the discussions, but in the end I think it didn't go anywhere.
I can see the point of the policy - without it any eligible organisation could register a good name and then sell sub-domains, thus cannibalising and greatly weakening the business model of the registry.

I think it's an excellent idea. There may be a little extra work to consider regarding liabilities resulting from improper use, but other than that it's a win/win/win.

I'd be on the fence for this one.

On the one hand, I'm all for co-operative identity. And our co-op is part of a network of tech co-ops https://coops.tech

However, on the other hand, it wasn't that hard for our co-op to get weareopen.coop, although that could be because one of our members is plugged into Co-ops UK...

There would be issues around identity here. My alternative suggestion would be to purchase an additional .coop domain and use that for subdomains.

I like this idea (taking Graham and Doug's concerns/ideas into account) and the hosting idea too, but I feel the need for a roadmap -- where do we see ourselves going and what kind of structure/work do we project? What obstacles do we expect and how will we prepare ourselves to meet them? What resources will we need and how can we get/develop them? Feeling like we need a retreat to discuss and draft a five year plan...

I'm of two minds about this -- as .coop is "affiliated" with the ICA and engaged in vetting organizations that get a .coop. To my knowledge, there is not existing policy that would prohibit a domains.coop ( http://domains.coop ) member from "sub-vetting" other organizations, however it would make us - at least informally - liable for any group we may extend the url to that proves to do something uncooperative (or what have you). So, it's tricky. Does anyone know of any precedents for doing this?

Generally, I'm all for decentralizing power and authority, spreading out accountability, responsibility, liability, etc. - so, I'm for this. And, candidly, while I greatly respect and hold in esteem the .coop people and what they're trying to accomplish, I know at least one legit group who had trouble getting a domain because they are not as Business formal as was required (though the eligibility requirements are broad enough to be open to interpretation, and have not been consistent across time - e.g. I have a personal .coop, which I don't think is allowed any longer, idk.). Our movement needs to engage non-Business forms of cooperatives if it is to really move. Secondly, in the very early days of dot.coop ( http://dot.coop ), there was some discussion of making it a common equity cooperative with all domain holders being voting members (full disclosure, I proposed this to the ~2011 Board meeting in Mexico and am not sure how much discussion there was). I believe that, when it didn't go that or a similar route, it became more entrenched within the NCBA as a potential revenue generating tool (though I doubt it ever did or will net revenue). Now, NCBA still plays some sort of ownership/control role, but it is managed by folks in the EU. So, I definitely feel like the tool could use some democratizing in the form of this kind of step and/or much greater transparency and movement participation in its employment. Here's just a disclaimer that my specifics might not be perfect on the history: I started paying attention in ~2010 and stopped paying attention in ~2015.

That said, it might get messy on the liability and administrative sides, and that might not be worth $120 a year (hence, the second mind). Additionally, if social.coop ( http://social.coop ) was to go that route, I would encourage folks to reach out to Violetta, Tom, and co at Domains.coop and tell them of the plan, see if there are precedents, etc. They might endeavor to throw a wrench in the plans, and even if they do and social.coop ( http://social.coop ) wanted to move forward anyway, at least everything would be transparent and lines of communication open.

I intend for my input to be helpful! Curious to see/hear if any domains.coop ( http://domains.coop ) folks are in this group and might have some useful information and perspective to toss in... And, if they're not involved, we should try to recruit one or two - seems in their wheelhouse, afterall! E

Great initiative, but I voted no for now. Policy questions aside (which would need to be answered), IMO it makes sense to use the social.coop namespace primarily for general purpose services used by all social.coop members: the wiki, the Mastodon instance, maybe other ActivityPub services, and so on.

If, as part of organizational membership, we do want to offer domain name related services to co-ops, I would suggest doing this in its own dedicated namespace (e.g., a separate domain). This would reduce the risk of confusion between social.coop and other co-operatives.

And there are other gTLDs that could be handy if we have policy issues using the .coop gTLD for this purpose, such as .pub (for public).

Looks like there isn't consensus to become what amounts to a sub-registrar for almost any co-op to run whatever webservices they want, but a more conservative option would be to provide social cloud services only (as part of the SaaS discussion) on *.social.coop (though of course users would have the option to use their own domains if desirable).

I believe we should get back to this after the call with Alice. A potential idea would be to create a new "umbrella cooperative", separate from social.coop that could serve as such sub-registrar.