Google today announced the release of Nomulus, a new open source cloud-based registry platform that runs Google’s top level domains (TLDs) and now available to everyone.

— Ben McIlwain, Google’s Software Engineer writes: “The project that became Nomulus began in 2011 when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the biggest ever expansion of Internet namespace, aimed at improving choice and spurring innovation for Internet users. Google applied to operate a number of new generic TLDs, and built Nomulus to help run them.”

— “Nomulus can manage any number of TLDs in a single shared instance and supports the full range of TLD functionality required by ICANN, including the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP), WHOIS, reporting, and trademark protection. It is written in Java and is released under the Apache 2.0 license.” –McIlwain

— “Donuts collaborates as pressure on registry providers mounts,” writes Andrew Allemann in Domain Name Wire: “Donuts, which currently uses Rightside’s backend technical services for its roughly 200 domain names, has been contributing to the project for the past 20 months, it revealed today. ... All of this means that Donuts could theoretically drop Rightside (NASDAQ:NAME) and move to Nomulus. But Donuts CEO Paul Stahura said the company has not committed to moving the backend for its top level domain names to Nomulus.”

— In a press today from Donuts, Paul Stahura said: “the option to evaluate and contribute to the Google Nomulus project presented a unique opportunity. ... Donuts must continually explore compelling technologies and ensure our back-end operations are cost-efficient and flexible. Collaborating with Google on this groundbreaking project is an opportunity to do exactly that.” According to the company, Donuts’ contributions to Nomulus project included technical specifications for the Domains Protected Marks List (DPML), Early Access Period (EAP) and tiered pricing.