TLD .org
The top-level domain .org was one of the original TLDs listed in RFC 920 and RFC 1591. It was originally intended for organizations not falling into the other domain categories, which made it basically the intended domain of noncommercial nongovernmental organizations. It thus picked up an image of being connected with nonprofit activities such as charities and open-source software projects. In the 1996 U.S. elections, many campaign sites were in .org domains, since candidate committees are not-for-profit, but since then most such things (and many other things that technically belong in .org) have tended to use .com domains instead because the public tends to be more familiar with them.
For a long time, its registry was the same as that of .com and .net, but it was eventually separated out to Public Interest Registry (PIR), which later also began operating the new .ngo and .ong domains as well. Their marketing angle is to promote domains for charitable and other noncommercial uses, though registration of .org remains unrestricted in use.
