A non-profit organization that is supported by Cloudflare, GitHub, and other organizations has open-sourced domain names, making them available with no catches or hidden fees. The sponsor of the free domain names explains that their purpose is not to replace commercial domain names but to offer an open-source alternative for developers, students, and people who want to create a hobby site for free.
The goal is to encourage making the Internet a free and open space so that everyone can publish and express themselves online without financial barriers.
DigitalPlat
The open source domains are offered by DigitalPlat, a non-profit organization that’s sponsored by 1Password, The Hack Club (The Hack Foundation), twilio, GitHub and Cloudflare.
The Hack Foundation is a certified non-profit organization of high school students that receive support from hundreds of supporters including Google.org and Elon Musk. The organization was founded in 2016.
According to their website:
“In 2018, The Hack Foundation expanded to act as a nonprofit fiscal sponsor for Hack Clubs, hackathons, community organizations, and other for-good projects.
Today, hundreds of diverse groups ranging from a small town newspaper in Vermont to the largest high-school hackathon in Pennsylvania are fiscally sponsored by The Hack Foundation.”
A notice posted on The Hack Foundation donation web page explains their connection to DigitalPlat:
“The DigitalPlat Foundation is a global non-profit organization that supports open-source and community development while exploring innovative projects. All funds are supervised and managed by The Hack Foundation, and are strictly regulated in compliance with US IRS guidance and legal requirements under section 501(c)(3). “
DigitalPlat FreeDomain
The free domain names can be registered via DigitalPlat and the free domains project is open source, licensed under AGPL-3.0.
An announcement was made by the GitHubs Projects Community on X with a link to a GitHub page for the free domains where the following domain extensions are listed as choices:
- .DPDNS.ORG
- .US.KG
- .QZZ.IO
- .XX.KG
Technically, those are subdomains. But so are .uk.com domains.
The official GitHub page for the domains recommends using Cloudflare, FreeDNS by Afraid.org, or Hostry for managing the DNS for zero cost.
The .KG domain is from the country code of Kyrgyzstan. DPDNS.ORG is the domain name of DigitalPlat FreeDomain. .US.KG is operated by the DigitalPlat Foundation, a non-profit charitable organization that’s sponsored by The Hack Foundation.
The Open-Source Projects page for the free domains explains the purpose and goals of the free domain offers:
“The project is open source (licensed under AGPL-3.0), transparent, and backed by The Hack Foundation, a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit. This isn’t a trial or a limited-time offer—it’s a sustainable effort to increase accessibility on the web.”
Full directions for registering a free domain name can be found here.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/TenPixels
