Nominet’s ‘evolution’

The Nominet Trust is splitting from UK domain register Nominet. After ten years the two have agree to separate, in order to more effectively scale its social impact.

Nominet describes itself as a ‘profit with a purpose company’ and the Trust is a registered charity.

Nominet has supported the Trust with funding of £44m over the last ten years, and will continue its public benefit programme focusing on security, connectivity and inclusivity, but the move to create a distinct line between the two has led to speculation that Nominet might be about to become a more aggressively commercial enterprise.

At the same time as this announcement was made on the Trust’s website, there have been several changes to the board, with Chair Natalie Campbell, and Trustees Nora Nanayakkara and Jemima Rellie all leaving the Trust. Rather curiously, new Chair Bill Liao is said, in the release, to have ‘the full support of Trustees Sebastien Lahtinen, who joined in 2015, and Beth Murray and Hannah Keartland who joined our Board last year’ which is an odd sentence to have added.

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