Reasons why BIND isn't being upgraded

Sun Feb 4 20:01:14 UTC 2001

Any flames sent my way will be accepted graciously -- but they won't
change my opinion.

Adam McKenna wrote:

> | The Vixie cluster of companies---Vixie Enterprises, Nominum, Vayusphere,
> | PAIX, M.I.B.H. (swalloed by Metromedia), etc.---is already doing its
> | best to make money off BIND. They give us configuration problems and
> | then sell support services; they give us reliability problems and then
> | sell backup services; they give us security problems and then sell early
> | access to security information.

Frankly - and this is my own opinion here as I have no formal association
with Paul Vixie or any of his business enterprises[0] - this isn't fair.

All software has bugs. Period. 

I have a particularly strong dislike for Microsoft, but they certainly do not
have a monopoly on bugs. Any decent-sized software project will have bugs pop
up from time to time.

WRT Config issues: Hello, people... this was a major-version upgrade... it
behooves you to do what I am going to do as soon as I am ready to upgrade, 
and test out all of your zones on another machine before deploying on the
production boxen. I understand that many of you are running a significantly
larger number of zones than I am. I do not think, in most cases, that that
would preclude testing before deployment.

Many -- MOST (probably "almost all") -- of you have far more extensive 
experience running your own pieces of the Internet than I have running 
mine, and y'all should know better.

(As should a couple of the Monks on alt.sysadmin.recovery who were 
complaining about problems upgrading.)

I suspect Dan'o knows better, too. 

[0]  <disclosure type="full">I am providing two dns servers running 
slaves for relays.mail-abuse.org and I run MAPS's rbl-nominate mailing 
list. I am doing these things as favors to friends who work, or have 
worked, for MAPS. MAPS and I don't have a formal agreement WRT 
providing these services.</disclosure>

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