isc - a good business

paul vixie vixie at isc.org
Mon May 28 10:32:47 UTC 2012


greetings. i didn't notice this before, and i want to complete the record.

i'm paying more attention to the quoting this time, too.

> On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 04:33:28PM -0400, Christopher Morrow wrote:
> > On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 1:40 AM,  <bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com> wrote:
> > > Paul will be there to turn things off when
> > >        they no longer make money for his company.
> > 
> > is the dns changer thingy making money for isc?

no. yes. depends on what you mean.

we're under contract to the department of justice to run the servers. the amount is
intended to be cost-recovery level. (doing stuff like this for nothing does not scale,
unless the business is successful enough elsewhere, and even then there'll be limits.)

> From: bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com (bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com)
> Date: Wed, 23 May 2012 21:00:27 +0000
> Message-ID: <20120523210027.GA26231 at vacation.karoshi.com.>
>
> 	pretty sure.  a contract w/ the Feds, outsouring contracts w/ affected ISPs
> 	when the Fed deal runs out, development funding to code these kinds of fixes 
> 	into future versions of software, any number of second and third order fallout.

i don't know of any outsourcing contracts that will come into force when the fed deal
runs out. there is no development funding because there are no code fixes for this kind
of problem. i am certainly hoping for second and third order fallout; we pay the people
who write BIND using money collected from other people who buy support for BIND, or
consulting, or training, or custom feature development. that's how we keep BIND free,
and that's how we use a BSD-like license rather than a GPL-like license -- noone who
derives their appliance or product from BIND has any obligation to anybody. (noting,
nlnetlabs for unbound and nsd also use a BSD-like license, so ISC is not alone here.)

> 	No telling how effective constent self-promotion is.  One thing is clear, Paul
> 	is able to tell a great story.

thanks for your kind words. i've been trying to uplevel my storytelling capability since
i've long since lost my coding skills.

> 	but its all speculation from here. ISC is well positioned to extract value
> 	from both ends of the spectrum.  They have a great business model. The optics
> 	look pretty odd from here, at lesat to me however - I am very glad for: )open 
> 	source & )other vendors of DNS SW.

the women and men of ISC work their asses off to keep the world safer and saner. as you
puzzle over our business model please keep in mind that there is no "exit" possibility
here -- no IPO, no buyout. salaries at ISC are fair and reasonable, but nobody's getting
rich doing this work. so while i am likewise glad for open source and for other vendors
of open source DNS software, i'm struggling to grasp the intended suggestion. should ISC
stop giving away software? should we stop adding the features to our software that make it
relevant and desireable? should we stop selling the support and training and consulting
that make it possible to give away this software?

if you have a specific accusation of evil-doing, or a specific suggestion for how ISC can
become more morally pure, then please say exactly what you mean, and we can discuss that.

for more information, see: <http://www.isc.org/community/blog/201001/why-isc-not-profit>.
the short version is: ISC is a good business, we do good things, mostly for free, but also
for our customers. and we're totally unapologetic about what we do and who we are.

paul





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