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Re: in support of axfr-clarify

At 06:26 AM 11/28/02, D. J. Bernstein wrote:

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BIND company employee Danny Mayer writes:

I am not and never have been an employee of either ISC or Nominum.


> You can't clarify without breaking something.

That's absurd.

No, it's reality.  You wouldn't need to clarify if the RFC weren't ambiguous.
Since it's ambiguous, people have made different interpretations of the
spec resulting in compatibility problems. So the clarification means that
someone's interpretation be noncompliant with the draft. Right now
that means yours will be noncompliant. Maybe others too.


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 the spec is unclear there are bound to be people not implementing
the same way as everyone else.


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.

No, the cost is not relevant. What is relevant is doing it right so
there are no future problems and any future extensions will be
implementable in some reasonable fashion.  The only question being
addressed here is what is the meaning of "right"?



> 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't fix IXFR if AXFR is not nailed down.


> 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.

Your statement does not include the word sell, for profit or otherwise.
There are many non-profits in the US that have trademarks. You also
seem to be restricting yourself to the US. Are you saying that ISC
cannot trademark the name whereever they please?

Danny


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