Not sure if this is the right place for this but I want to buy a domain and I would like to support floss if that is even a thing for domains.
Technically, if one wanted to, they could create their own DNS server. Anyone who’s configured their device to use that DNS server would then be able to access any domain registered on that custom server. A custom TLD is used to prevent clashes with the rest of the internet.
I’ve used freedns.afraid.org.
You can run up to 5 domains on there free of charge. On their about-us page, they state that all the money generated from premium users goes back into the company. Their domains are all public, and are “donated” (not sure if that’s the word) by many generous people. Their site says they’re currently getting around 7 billion dns requests a month.
The website was started by a hobbiest developer who wanted “to create a safe environment where other programmers could share domain names with one another at no cost”.
I’m not sure that it really counts as FOSS, but it provides a way for anyone to use a domain free of charge without having to own any server infrastructure themselves.
https://freedns.afraid.org/about-us/
Edit: also just realized this post is 3 years old, sorry for being a bit late to the party! I hope this helps someone else :)
Before the GDPR made EU based domain name hosters no longer expose private data from customers, there were domain name hosters which would offer you protection of your private details. (The previous situation was actually very bad, exposing name, address, email address and phone number to the rest of the world. Spammers abused it). Lately whenever I lookup WHOIS information it looks like all private details of customers are hidden. I don’t know how things are outside EU. Here an example of a domain name hoster talking about changes due to GDPR : https://www.transip.eu/knowledgebase/entry/831-your-gdpr-privacy-rights-transip/
Unfortunately this only applies to people under GDPR. Currently we (non GDPR) can pay an extra dollar to hide WHOIS information, or maybe some registrars have it built into their price. Not sure if the WHOIS censorship was a result of the GDPR, or they improved upon other stuff too that us who don’t fall under GDPR miss out on. You do still need to put in a fair bit of information to the registrar most of the time though unfortunately.
I know Njalla exists, but they’re not a registrar, they’re a middleman between you and the registrar. Although it is far more expensive than most registrars, I believe they buy the domain outright. They accept a wide variety of payment options including various cryptocurrencies. But yeah, I don’t know of anything else, they are only registrars but I would take a libre registrar in a heartbeat if it was priced similar and was solid.
No. Privacy alone is hard and tricky. ICANN doesn’t really allow privacy. Though NICs located within the EU protect your privacy since they have to comply with GDPR. ICANN tolerates that they break their rules and works on rew rules that allow to comply with GDPR. ICANN requires your mail address, phone number and email address to be publicly available via whois. You don’t offially own the domain when a registrar offers private registration where they put there their own contact data.
