Re: TM/UCC distractions [Was Re: in support of axfr-clarify]

[Danny Mayer <mayer@gis.net>]

At 11:54 PM 12/1/02, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:
[Note: the rest of this has been taken offline - pdm]
> Maybe this way we
> can get back to the things that matter in this thread -- like what to do
> about a 'clarification' that I gather breaks some substantial quantity of
> deployed software...
No, nothing breaks per se. The disagreement, as I understand it, is
which records get transferred to the requestor during an AXFR request
that represents the whole zone. The subplot is what response should
be given to a requestor who is not authorized to transfer the zone.

> > Of course, it is relevant to point out that if BIND were a commercial 
> product
> > it would cost more, in real money, to have it changed than for djbdns to be
> > changed. Since djbdns is apparently a non-commercial product and noone
> > is employed to make changes or fixes to it, it costs nothing to change and
> > we have therefore chosen the cheapest alternative.
> >
>
> This is absurd.  The mind boggles.  If this were true there would be no
> commercial software at all since it's always the low cost producer.
I'm not sure how your response relates to my comment. You are, for
example, apparently using Pine as your mail client which is a free piece
of software. However, most people, especially in companies use Microsoft's
Outlook, which in conjunction with Microsoft Exchange, is an enormous
cost, relatively speaking, for most companies. Microsoft's Windows O/S
which can cost anything from $99 to $199 or more is still the most popular
platform even though there are many different free versions of Unix, like
FreeBSD and Linux. The cost to Microsoft to fix a bug or close a security
hole and then distribute the fix is rather large, but they do it anyway. Bugs
or security holes in say Linux also get fixed and distributed by the various
Linux supporting organizations like Red Hat, but their visibility is much lower
and I suspect, but don't know, that their associated costs are much lower.

To sum this up, people buy and use according to their own perceptions,
otherwise people would be buying AMD's chips rather than Intel's since
their prices are lower. BIND has an enormous installed base and admins
are slow to install bug fixes for security holes, never mind upgrades that
fix protocol errors or changes. djbdns has a much smaller base and therefore
a smaller number of admins to deal with fixes and changes. djb recommends
using resync rather than AXFR, so I suspect that use of AXFR by users
of djbdns is a very small number relatively speaking. So, once a change
is made how many systems are really impacted, especially given that
good admins regularly upgrade the software on their systems anyway?


Danny


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