Re: Structuring the Root

[peterd at Bunyip.Com (Peter Deutsch)]

One more, and I'll go to work, I promise.

[ You wrote: ]
.  .  .
> The pigeon-hole I wanted to stick you into was the state of incorporation
> of the company (or companies).
>  
> Sounds fair enough?

Nope. Bunyip is incorporated under Canadian Federal law
(with offices in Quebec), we own a U.S. subsidiary
(incorporated in Delware) and a Canadian subsidiary based
in Toronto (Ontario). The parent company has in the past
dealt in funded R&D, training, custom development,
software sales and free T-shirts, carrying on business
throughout the world (we have always done at least ninety
percent of our business outside Quebec in each of the six
years of our existance). The U.S. corporation basically
handles some U.S. contracts that require a U.S. presence,
but has no offices or staff. The Toronto subsidiary
focuses on lines of business (such as graphic design,
online services) that the parent doesn't see as core, and
they with primarily a Canadian focus.

But with your proposal, you'd require that I register my
parent company as "bunyip.qc.ca". I don't want this. I'm
happy with "bunyip.com". We're an Internet company and
believe distance and geography are irrelevant to the net.

And for what it's worth, I was born in California, raised
in Australia and live in Canada, with Scottish and Alsatian
grandparents. Where would you have me register my personal
details?

If tried to force me to change, I would support the
creation of an alternative DNS service, I would encourage
all my friends and business partners to do the same, and
once this new service had absorbed the original DNS, I'd
stop paying my $50/year to NSI. I estimate this would all
happen within six months, although it may take less time
than that, if you tried to kick people out of their
current names.

It's a home truth that's been said a million times before,
but which bears repeating. The Internet, or more
correctly, the Internet way of doing things, simply
absorbs all competition. Either you play by the rules, or
we route around you. Eventually, the process of allowing
individuals to make their choices and Darwinian selection
to determine the overall outcome, works better than
anything else we've seen and it wins the day. You fight
this at your peril. It has, so far, absorbed the OSI
effort, IBM's view of central computing, Microsoft's view
of online services, countless proprietary protocols,
applications and services. It means that network access is
accessible at home to over half the children in Canada
(and probably about the same in other Western countries)
and is soon to go "video" on us. It simply works.

No, we will not succeed in telling people how to use our
tools. Some people might try, and they will fail. So
whenever someone, with the best will and intention in the
world, proposes rules on the tools, they wil become
irrelevant.

And yes, there are even times when I wish this wasn't the
way it works. At such times I take a deep breath, wait a
while, and and it always passes.


				- peterd

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Peter Deutsch,                                   (514) 875-8611  (phone)
  Bunyip Information Systems Inc.                     (514) 875-8134  (fax)
    <peterd at bunyip.com>                               http://www.bunyip.com

 "This document must be read and contemplated in its entirety in order to
 understand its meaning and intent. This is because many concepts in the
 characterization of SR&ED are interrelated and cannot be applied in isolation.
 Quoting extracts out of context is often inconsistent with a holistic
 interpretation. "
		- Revenue Canada Income Tax Information Circular No. 97-1,
                  "Scientific Research and Experimental Development -
                  Administrative Guidelines for Software Development"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------