Verisign vs. ICANN

Paul Vixie vixie at vix.com
Fri Jun 18 23:48:10 UTC 2004


i've watched (or maybe helped) a thread susan didn't like morph into a
different thread that susan's probably not liking much either.  hit D now.


oh well, i warned you.

ariel at fireball.tau.ac.il (Ariel Biener) writes:
> ...
> This, in my own humble opinion, climbs slowly but surely to the levels of
> being ridiculous. Paul did exactly what any good vendor would do. If many
> customers or users asked for a feature, the vendor would issue the
> feature. It is the administrators choice to use the feature. As such, it
> is not the vendors fault in any way.

verisign's first amended complaint (now reachable at www.icann.org, i'm told)
does not mention BIND or patches to BIND at all.  but For The Record, it was
not simply end-user demand that drove "the wildcard patch".  end-users have
often asked for things that were protocol violations and been told "no" --
for example, the alternate root whackos with their "multiple root patches".
of course BIND is very free as software goes -- it's not GPL'd or anything --
so it's perfectly forkable as codebases go.  ISC cherishes its relevance,
and the thing that caused "the wildcard patch" to be published was the very
real threat by several very credible people to fork BIND unless there was
an official patch "Real Soon Now".  THAT is why there was a "wildcard patch."

patrick at ianai.net (Patrick W Gilmore) writes:
> ...
> Have the roots recurse and put a wildcard in for anything that does not
> resolve. > Makes Paul a ... well, not a competitor, 'cause that would
> imply they were in competition.  If the roots put in the wild card, the
> GTLDs cannot compete.

i have absolutely no influence over the content of the root zone.  i can't
even get an AAAA RR added for the glue NS used by 50 or 60 TLD's.  but if i
had any influence over the root zone, i would use it to prevent a wildcard
from ever being added.  (i like my nxdomains straight up, no ice, no soda.)

hrlinneweh at sbcglobal.net (Henry Linneweh) writes:
> ...
> It is amazing that one psrson Paul Vixie could be so intimidating that he
> must be intimidated and maligned as a conspirator in order to eliminate
> him as a potential threat because of his knowledge.....

i'm not sure verisign cares whether they intimidate me or not.  they just
need to prove that a conspiracy is restraining competition, in order to
prevent their complaint against icann from being dismissed.  which means
they had to declare that somebody was a co-conspirator, and i was available.
this is not about me at all, other than by proximity -- it's about icann.
-- 
Paul Vixie



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