Dot and Co views

Dot and Co takes many ideas from the model of the Debian GNU/Linux open source distribution and from the world of OpenSource which means more specifically to target features and adhesion to standards rather than targeting the lowest common denominator. We will always have first in mind the highest quality as objective while building our services, and then adapt them to users without specific knowledge, rather than the opposite.

Dot and Co will strive to have its systems and services conforming at 100% to all standards with a set of features unavailable elsewhere, which will be made as simple as possible to the highest number of individuals.

The philosophy behind our daily work includes in particular the following points that are important to us:

• a public list of ongoing and future works, notably the planned maintenances or upgrades on running services, which are done following a specific procedure and a schedule known in advance (no dangerous modifications at any time without planning and information),
• a list of services to be developed or being developed where clients can themselves rate their priority to classify projects which are more urgent so that we will be able to build first what is most wished while taking into account all related stakes for each service as well as cost of creation and maintenance,
• some statistics and graphs showing evolution in services' use to illustrate our will of openess,
• a real-time indication of running state of all services, and the possibility to receive alerts by email in case of maintenance or problems on our network, also through other means (RSS feed, iCal calendar, etc...),
• creation of formal procedures, especially regarding updates or areas related to security, as well as to automatically and systematically monitor running state of all services so that users are not forced to always report problems,
• a testing system always available (web site and other services) alongside all services currently in production, to be able to deploy updates progressively and let others test our services without consequences,
• a strong attention toward security on all levels: servers' security, security of stored data (such as passwords), security of exchanges with third parties,
• a true communication, with archives, and systematically with as much details as possible describing the problems' origins, their area and the solution applied,
• a real positioning on issues related to domain names, coupled to extensive information,
• a technical support service which is available, fast, rigorous, qualified and open (about its quality and response time),
• permanent availability of a satisfaction rate so that we can always adapt our work,
• egality of treatment for all,
• respect and protection of users' private life, and implementation of all means available to limit spam.

We adhere to many points described in the «Cluetrain Manifesto». This is why our projects are exposed publicly, why all interested parties are welcome to join, and why all Dot and Co staff is available, each person individually, through many ways, such as newsgroups. We are thus open at any time to outside notices, suggestions or critics.

We also would like to work against unfair terms for end clients in agreements, as exposed on http://www.fairterms.org/.

Dot and Co being built with and on open source software, it has been decided by everyone involved in this project that services available through Dot and Co will be available for free to some free software projects.

We plan to go even further than that, as we have decided (and declared in company legal statutes) that as soon as Dot and Co is profitable, a percentage of our benefit will be used to help open source projects based on criteria we will determine later on.

In the same spirit, we created a website ( http://www.dotandco.net/ ) dedicated to information about Internet naming issues, with neutrality and no bias toward our own services. There are also news headlines and reports, available through other ways such as an RSS feed. This web site is aiming toward providing better information to any individual interested by domain names. It is an open participation to information and communication about domain names ; it will not be a marketing effort, not one of Dot and Co, nor other companies.