Thank you for the update on development of FRED now to use docker. As you may be aware, we at the Malawi .mw registry have been following this development and testing for sometime now.

Although it looks good, it still does not address our request for diversity that we have been talking to Jaromir about for a few years now.

FRED treats all registrars as the same. FRED treats all domains as the same. However, in our experience in running the .mw registry on FRED for the last 10 or so years, we have come to know that registrars and domains are not the same. Registrars can be ICANN accredited or nationally accredited, be private or public institurtions etc. Domains can be ordinary, they can be premium at various levels, they can be restricted, etc

This could, for example, be done for registrars by including attributes in the PostgreSQL database a "type" that could be related to charges for the registrar on domain create or renew. We have noted that there is a VAT entry but this has proved unusable for clasifying registrars. However, the inclusion of a VAT registrar and a non-VAT registrar demonstrates that inclusion of a "type" attribute is feasible for registrars in FRED. We would developers to include a maximum of 5 possible types. A possble place could be in the registrar table in the PostgreSQL database.

For domains, diversity could be introduced by a "class" or "category" column entry in the domain table in PostgreSQL that can take values of 1 to 5.

Relating each registrar or domain type or category to how transactions like domain create, renew or transfer are charged to the registrar would add a lot of value to the FRED registry system.

We would like to request and recommend to the FRED developers to seriously consider including such hooks in FRED to increase diversity of registrars and domains that FRED can handle as a registry system.

The FRED team is proud to announce new public release 2026.1. New version contains two major changes - migration to Debian 12 and database upgrade to PostgreSQL 17. We've also completed the dockerization of the Messenger, Secretary, and Fileman and plan on adding other services.

Visit the Get FRED page, with the latest versions of packages in the Install binaries section.

In addition to the public release, a new version of FRED Demo image is available, which has pre-installed newest version of the registry and, in addition, the previously introduced new version of the DNSSEC automation tool AKM.

We are continuing with our strategy of migrating everything to Docker. As part of this effort we recently successfully dockerized secretary, messenger and fileman marking a key milestone toward more consistent and maintainable deployments.

Building on this progress, the plan is to continue dockerizing additional packages to improve portability, scalability, and operational efficiency across environments.

Debian’s more conservative release cycle and focus on stability make it better suited for server deployments. Technically, this is a straightforward transition with minimal changes to configurations or service management, as the core components remain largely the same and it will result in the unification of the operational environment across infrastructure.

Future public releases will be based on Debian as well, so registries operating FRED are advised to start preparing migration plan as well in order to adapt these changes efficiently.

The latest FRED release now requires PostgreSQL 17, which offers improved performance, better query handling, and more robust database management.

The CZ.NIC Association released a new version of EPPIC on July 2, 2025. Compared to the previous version, new commands have been added, the behavior of existing commands has been improved (in a backward-compatible way), and text errors have been fixed.

Session management in EPPIC 3.1.0 has been significantly improved to better align with the EPP protocol. A new epp-login command now allows users to specify full login parameters (like newPW, lang, extURI, and clTRID), offering more control than the previous simplified login approach. Support for the fred-client tool officially ended in April last year. It had served as the standard interface for communicating with the Czech domain registry FRED. A new client eppic is built on the modern Python library fred-epplib , which is significantly easier to integrate into existing systems and workflows compared to its predecessor.

Along with version 2.49.0, FRED added support for the GlobalBlock, a service from Brand Safety Alliance, allowing domain name registration blocking across multiple TLDs. Registries using FRED can now automate these blocks using this BSAPP extension. The extension is currently fully functional and available to members with paid support, and we plan to add it into the future public release.