A work item?

>     a few of the world's largest ISPs appear to have made 
>     a business decision to use a superset of the ICANN/US 
>     Department of Commerce's root zone.
> 
> Which big ones? I've never seen any official message about this.

the only folk who say this are in the marketing department of the
new.dns fools and a few misguided and/or misinformed net.politicians.

> I've seen various claims by various alternative root operators. None
> have been confirmed by independent research as far as I know.

folk who think this nonsense is viable are doomed to relive history.
the same rogue namespace silliness was tried in fidonet and failed a
decade ago.

randy