I'd have to agree that I don't think ICANN will be much better.

It seems up till now it's just been eccentrics or idealists and greedy corporations working towards replacing the roots and adding additional gTLD's. Perhaps the ongoing showdown between ICANN and NSI will force more of the pragmatists that are actually running the net to look at alternatives. Perhaps Vixie will start bundling pointers to alternative roots with the BIND distribution. Perhaps I'm also becoming an idealist.....