That all the cool 2-letter TLDs are designated as country codes was an extraordinary mistake that will have unpredictable and devastating consequences long into the future.

https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db

Is this just an idea at this point, or some kind of "you have to use our DNS to resolve .self domains" scheme - ?

I remember publishing a website for a class on my .tk domain, the teacher couldn't open it and I almost got a failing grade because of it.

Will there be any assurance that renewal prices will remain fairly stable, rather than being significantly raised after customers grow attached to their domains (a practice that seems to be common with new gTLDs)?

  upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: remote connection failure, transport failure reason: delayed connect error: Connection refused

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Self

How will you ensure this?

> Everyone entitled to a subdomain at no cost

How are you going to pay for the (substantial) cost of running a TLD without registration fee revenue? Is this a loss leader for other services? Are you operating on a 100% donation model?

> No parking, squatting, or reselling

How do you plan to tell the difference between a parked/squatted domain and one in legitimate use but offering no public-facing services?

> - Everyone entitled to a subdomain at no cost

One subdomain, or one subdomain? Would I be entitled to something like "pavel.hosts.self"?