<kre>
But wrt ccTLDs you're right, NL certainly wasn't first - excluding
US and UK (which were registered before registrations opened...).
If I remember correctly, the UK was replaced by GB for a short time
(a week ?) but it got quickly reinstated for obvious reasons. There
were quite some complaints to put it mildly.
I think the first was IL (and it would have been 1985 - before the
1986 reg date cited for NL).
According to IANA, the creation date for IL is 1985-10-24 and for NL
1986-04-25. I think that some people claim that IL wasn't active for a
long time. I wouldn't know whether this was true and makes sense (and
really don't care who was first). As John says, was all just a
collaborative effort.
Ignoring UK, NL might well have been the first
European TLD registered though.
Very likely. After NL was registered, were often asked how to get a
ccTLD so we (actually, Doug P Kinston III from BRL who was on a
sabbatical at the CWI) created a "top level domain application kit"
which contained example documents. I have it still somewhere in an
archive.
<klensin>
| I really wish that we could somehow restore the spirit of a
| collaborative effort, one with many cooperating contributors to
It would be good, but it is too big for that now, and includes all those
people whose primary interest is publicity (including politicians of
course) - for whom outlandish claims and self promotion are normal.
And don't forget the financial interest...
Anyway, this is probably not the right place to discuss history.
jaap