Careful. After all, we worked a
lot on JAS, and it was designed to address that flaw which had been anticipated long in advance.
Yet only three bodies applied for JAS, and they all had insider connections.
So if people were aware of the TLD expansion, and even a cursory search would indicate the existence of the JAS program (and other forms of assistance offered to qualified applicants), the issue is far more complex than "ridiculous pricing"
As I have argued (as is apparently now referred to as "the Evan question" :-) ), owning a gTLD presents little value over beyond speculation, vanity and luxury. As a luxury item, one can easily do without it and still maintain significant Internet presence (as so many already do). So as Milton said, anyone doing a hard analysis would find that in most cases a gTLD just isn't worth not only the ICANN fees, but also the substantial human and logistical expense of regulatory compliance, marketing, WHOIS maintenance, reseller/registrar relations, government meddling, trademark industry meddling, etc. Not to mention having enough of a reserve to help your registrants -- who depend upon your domains -- in case you have your own sustainability problems.
In other words, for the VAST bulk of the world's organizations (let alone people) owning a new gTLD just isn't worth the multiple costs and challenges -- not just within the developing world, but also in much of the developed part, too. How many applications are there that don't come from:
- existing ICANN speculators
- telcos and infrastructure companies
- multinationals for whom the expense is small enough to be able to completely write off or absorb the entire effort without pain
So before just talking about ridiculous pricing, let's ask those who shied away what amount of cost would have been "non-ridiculous". Even without the $185K, back-end registry operational challenges are substantial and are not all solved in software.
I have more than a passing interest in open source and development, amongst other things having
keynoted at the very first IDLELO conference,
led a 22-person open source delegation at WSIS1/ICT4D and
was involved in the formation of FOSSFA. And I would be the first to suggest that while just about everything needed software-wise to run a registry could be done in open source (if it hasn't already), software cost/licensing is such a trivial part of the expense of running a registry that FOSS issues (and expertise) are essentially irrelevant here.