Re: in support of axfr-clarify

["D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>]

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BIND company employee Danny Mayer writes:
> You can't clarify without breaking something.

That's absurd.

Right now, because the specifications are unclear, implementors have to
spend a lot of time investigating how the protocol actually works. Most
of us have been very careful about this; consequently, there have been
very few AXFR interoperability problems. (The ``non-glue records'' bug
introduced in BIND 8.2.3 is an exception.)

We can save tons of time for future implementors, and reduce the chance
of future interoperability problems, by clarifying the existing AXFR
protocol. This need not, and should not, break anything.

If there were a current interoperability problem between two deployed
pieces of software, and if both implementors claimed to be right, then
we'd have to resolve the conflict one way or another, after evaluating
the costs of each approach. But that's not the situation here. You're
wrong when you suggest that all differences between implementations are
interoperability problems.

> can't do IXFR

So fix IXFR. Stop demanding that _my_ users pay to make _your_ silly
protocol extensions work. Compatibility is not rocket science.

> You can trademark anything without it being a commercial product.

An applicant for a trademark must declare that he is using, or intends to
use, the mark in commerce. See 37 C.F.R. 2.33.

---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago



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