Well, the IETF is actually incorporated as IETF LLC, even if it's true that it is currently 100% owned by ISOC ( https://ietf.org/about/administration/background/ ). Perhaps ISOC would be interested in selling the IETF as well? Though I don't think they can make a billion dollars out of it.

 

Anyway, just a historical note: when ISOC was awarded .org, "ensuring the money to run the IETF" was the #1 justification that was given for the deal in the corridors. Of course ISOC was chosen after a lengthy bidding process; still everyone in the ICANN community understood that picking them was necessary to keep the Internet running - if not for that, we could have heard much stronger complaints at that time already. I've not been meeting Esther for over a decade now, so I have no idea of her motivations, but I suppose she is just trying to preserve the original deal: the .org extra revenue, after running costs are covered, is meant to pay for the practical cost of the vital community efforts that keep the Internet running, not for some venture capitalist's yacht in the Bahamas.

 

More generally, this is also a cultural issue; perhaps in the United States this might be seen as normal, but in other parts of the world (and dot org is used globally) it is just unfair to make significant profit over a basic community resource, no matter how well the resource is run. This explains why so many people find it just right that dot org should only ever be assigned to a non-profit entity.