Does Saint Pierre and Miquelon mean anything to you? It’s a small French-owned territory just off the coast of Newfoundland.
Why would this be of any interest on a Perl blog? Well, it’s a French territory with it’s own ccTLD. And that ccTLD is .pm.
Ever since Perl Mongers started we’ve looked longingly at that TLD, thinking how cool it would be to own a .pm domain. But domain registration in .pm is run by the French registry, AFNIC and for at least the last thirteen years they have refused all registrations under that domain. This made many Perl Mongers very sad.
But that is about to change. It appears that from 6th December, AFNIC are going to open registrations under a number of their previously suspended domains – including .pm. I think you’ll need to be in the EU in order to register a .pm domain, but I don’t think that will be a huge problem.
And it’s not just for Perl Monger groups. You’ll also be able to have domains for your favourite Perl modules too (or, at least, the ones without ‘::’ in their names).
Which .pm domains do you have your eye on? And what are you going to do with it.
Maybe one year we should have YAPC::NA in Saint Pierre and Miquelon and YAPC::EU in Poland.
Be aware that for other TLDs handled by the AFNIC (namely .fr and .re) they have those pesky rules where there is additional checks when registering domains based on city names (although, if I remember correctly, this only applies to french city names).
Indeed the .pm, along with the other TLDs managed by AFNIC (.fr, .wf, .tf, .re, and .yt) will open to all European Citizens on 6 December 2011 ! There is indeed special creation rules for french cities but even those have been opened in July 2011.