OpenNIC is a non-commercial Project, which provides alternative DNS Servers for the public.

While several such nonstandard TLDs are currently implemented by a number of organizations and under consideration by ICANN, this particular implementation [New.net] smacks of an attempt to overthrow more legitimate pioneers of alternate domain-names (e.g. OpenNIC, AlterNIC).

I tried with some of those servers from the OpenNIC website and no pages would load at all.

DNS has always been open source. And OpenNIC existed LONG before OpenDNS, and noone EVER mentioned them. In fact, to my knowledge, OpenNIC never did the bs "sitefinder" crap OpenDNS does. They also have more DNS servers in more countries. OpenDNS is nothing special.

OpenNIC makes me warm and fuzzy.

I love how OpenNIC’s website referes to anything ICANN as legacy, and OpenNIC is open to partnerships to run your own top
level root. Might submit a proposal for a .mono root later and host it…. Maybe not… Cute thought though.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to ICANN: namely, OpenNIC. Unfortuantely, people are already arguing that the State should bring alternate domain name authorities under regulation, or eliminate them. One justification used for this is that these alternatives may create "collisions" with ICANN, where they create a .com domain-name that collides with ICANN's .com domain-name.

Definitely worth a browse to see how some communities on the Internet remain independent and centralized around users.

For many users, the concept of using an alternate DNS system might sound a bit dodgy, but reaching OpenNIC's namespace is not as hard as one might think. All you need to do is add one or more of OpenNIC's DNS servers to your operating system's DNS list. Once you have set up your OS to use an OpenNIC nameserver, reaching sites within its namespace is a transparent process.