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

[Kevin Darcy <kcd@daimlerchrysler.com>]

Look, people, I'm sure you're all dying to impress us with your respective stores
of knowledge about various aspects of the law, but there's no reason for this
discussion to disappear down a rathole of legalism. When DJB uses the term
"BIND company employee" his plain implication is to assign some sort of ulterior
profit motive to the referenced individual. It's basically just a childish
_ad_hominem_, and a ludicrous one at that, since even if BIND is in some limited,
technical legal context "commercial", "in commerce", "a commercial product" or
whatever, the simple fact is that BIND (like djbdns) is given away free, and thus
there is no discernible, provable profit motive involved. Or, if DJB has such
proof, let him present it. Merely waving legalisms around doesn't prove intent or
motive, or detract from anyone's arguments for or against any particular IETF
document.


- Kevin

Danny Mayer wrote:

> 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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