A high-level overview of the background of the ".org" top-level domain and what happened with its recent attempted sale to a private equity firm

I think that this has revealed the extent to which the current domain name ecosystem depends on informal understandings of what the various actors are going to do, as opposed to formal commitments to do them. For instance, many opposed to the sale seem to have expected that ISOC would continue to manage .org in the public interest and felt that the Ethos sale threatened that. However, as a practical matter the registry agreement doesn’t include any such obligation and in particular nothing really stops them from raising prices much higher in order to maximize profit as opponents argued Ethos might do (although ISOC’s nonprofit status means they can’t divest those profits directly).

I mean, the fact that ISOC is a nonprofit while Ethos Capital is not really is a big deal, though. Like yeah, ISOC has not made any "formal commitments" to operate .org registry in the public interest. But if you read their mission statement, it's hard to imagine how they could possibly milk the registry for all its worth without just being ludicrously corrupt and completely trashing their own reputation. Meanwhile, it wouldn't take corruption for a private equity company to milk something for all its worth, because that's just what a private equity company does by design. That's why I don't need a "formal commitment" from ISOC to trust them. I honestly am surprised someone writing for Mozilla, a nonprofit but commercial organization that was formed for many of the reasons I have alluded to, would not understand that.