I definitely see what you're saying, but think there are pro's and con's 
both ways.

OSU is already responsible for the bulk of our infrastructure too, 
adding the DNS would be minor.

But there are definitely pro's (as well as con's) to individual and/or 
non-institutional ownership/responsibility/management, compared to 
institutional.

In the end, as with much Code4Lib, as with much volunteer projects -- 
what it comes down to is who's offering to volunteer to do it. OSU is 
offering to volunteer to do it (and pay for it, apparently?), and we 
obviously find OSU to be generally responsible, since they host the rest 
of our infrastructure.

Someone offering to do it right now, someone we find generally 
responsible -- always beats the hypothetical other solution that has 
nobody actually volunteering to do it.

So, Wilhelmina, are you volunteering to run the DNS instead? :) (and pay 
for it, or fundraise to pay for it)  If you are, then we might have two 
options. Otherwise, we've got one, and no reason to reject it unless we 
thought OSU was not trustworthy with the responsibility or something 
(which if we did, would be a big problem, since they already responsible 
for a lot more than that).

On 12/18/2012 4:34 PM, Wilhelmina Randtke wrote:
> I'm for individual ownership and management over organizational.
> Organizations tend to not have written documentation, and to rely on
> institutional memory.  I see two things going wrong:  Contact at OSU leaves
> OSU and no one thinks to renew domain, or OSU doesn't have a dedicated
> contact and at some point they don't renew because they don't see the value.
>
> Also important:  OSU is on state funding cycles, so may have some rule
> against renewing for more than a year at a time.  So, the deadline to renew
> will come more frequently than it would with unrestricted funds and the
> ability to renew for 5 or 10 years at a time.
>
> When the domain expires, it will go into a redemption period of about a
> month.  I remember what the whois record looks like for domains in the
> redemption period, and whois does give the contact information.  Does the
> URL stop working during this period?  If so, then that's great because if
> there is a problem with a renewal then many people will notice the URL not
> working, and be able to check the status of the domain and get on it.
>
> -Wilhelmina Randtke
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 2:32 PM, Ed Summers <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> HI all,
>>
>> I've owned the code4lib.org since 2005 and have been thinking it might
>> be wise for to transfer ownership of it to someone else. Sometimes I
>> forget to pay bills, and miss emails, and it seems like the domain
>> means something to a larger group of people.
>>
>> With Ryan Ordway's help Oregon State University indicated they would
>> be willing to take over administration of the domain. They also have
>> been responsible for running the Drupal instance at code4lib.org and
>> the Mediawiki instance at wiki.code4lib.org -- so it seems like a
>> logical move.
>>
>> But I thought I would bring it up here first in the interests of
>> transparency, community building and whatnot, to see if there were any
>> objections or ideas.
>>
>> //Ed
>>
>
>