Nominet members kick out five board members.
Four of Nominet’s board members have been removed as a result of voting at an Extraordinary General Meeting today. The initiative was to remove five board members, but one of those members, now-former Nominet CEO Russel Haworth, resigned ahead of the vote.
52.74% of the vote was cast in favor of the resolution and there was 53.5% turnout for the vote.
Organizers also requested that two named board members be added to the slate, but Nominet did not put that to a vote.
The grassroots initiative was started by people who felt that Nominet had strayed too far from its original mission of administering the .UK namespace. The non-profit expanded its business lines into security, spectrum, and other unrelated fields. Those in favor wanted to see the company go back to operating .UK and keeping operations lean, donating profits to charity.
In his resignation statement, Haworth stated “We sought to build Nominet into an international tech business, growing beyond our core registry business, and we made great business.”
Why a non-profit domain name registry would want to become an international tech business is a bit of a head-scratcher. As I posited last week, this is what happens when you hire people who want to turn something boring into something interesting.
Now the question is how the remainder of the board will make changes. In a statement today, it declared, “The board acknowledges that members have made a clear statement with today’s vote and will be working on a strategic change in direction.”
Mike says
Good news. I think Russell Haworth was vastly overpaid at £722,000 Sterling for what is not really a tough job. In my opinion a small number of people saw/see Nominet as a “cash cow” that can be milked. What I think the small group hate is that the powers are held by the Members ,and those members, as they have now seen ,hold the power. It will not be long before they attempt to take away that power of members ,and thus they need to be ready to fight that in whatever legal ways they can.
snoopy1267 says
Very similar situation to auDA in Australia. These people are running a government endorsed registry, it is a specific and important task. However they they seem to think they are the next Mark Zuckerberg and want to turn a not for profit that is vital to their country into a tech startup, usually jacking up registration prices in the process and adding layers of expenses.
It is pure nonsense and these directors absolutely deserve to go. Haworth should be issuing an apology right now instead of continuing to talk himself up.
Frank Michlick says
I wonder if this will serve as “precedent” (putting this in quotation marks as of course each ccTLD has their own laws/situation) for other countries. In Canada, the registry is also run by a not-for-profit, CIRA, without government oversight that extends their services, some related to being a registry, some not so much. Compensation and price increases do not seem to be an issue here so much though.
Mike says
I think the answer to that is dependant upon whether it is a membership body, if so who the members are (e.g. .ca registrars or other parties) and what the constitution says. Extremely difficult to predict without that knowledge.
Mike says
Listening to the statement of the new (interim) chairman after the vote was announced, they sound none too enthusiastic about implementing what the sacked board members promised in a failed attempt to save their own skins.
But I think and hope they realise they have little option. Any backtracking, I expect, will see an even greater member turnout to vote against board proposals. Added to which those proposals will now have to be made to the membership, not behind closed doors. That will no longer be tolerated, is the mood I picked up from social media.
GoDaddy further damaged its credibility, and that of its conglomorate constituents, by following up the blocked domain names debacle with a vote against the wider membership. Those members as well as many registrants see GoDaddy’s activities as against their interests.
Keep it up, GD. I hate monopolistic behaviour. I can’t wait to see you break up and drown, brought on by your own greed and arrogance.