djbdns: An alternative to BIND

Mon Apr 11 18:20:07 UTC 2005

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, Dean Anderson wrote:

[critisicism of AXFR in BIND9 snipped]

Again, the point of all of that is that they chose to implement protocol 
that is non-standard, but knowing that they made sure that this would only 
be used between BIND9 programs. This is proprietary protocol but as long 
as its used only when their products are talking to each other, there is 
nothing substantially wrong. Well ok, what maybe wrong is that they still 
call it AXFR instead of clearly calling it something like AXFR-BIND9.

Note that it matters, but cisco has very many prorprietary additions, just 
take "weight" in bgp routes for instance. Since these features are only 
used for communication between two cisco routers there is nothing 
seriously wrong with them having such a features.

> 5) Then, after criticism, finally decided to try to clarify the draft,
> assuming that their employee who was a Working group co-chair would breeze
> through the change. As justification for the change, they asserted it
> would be easier for the 6 or 8 other DNS implementations to change their
> installed base than to change BIND9. (holy cost-shifting, batman)

That is why some people now say its now IVTF and not IETF. Large vendors 
(large by comparing their share in the market for particular area or 
simply a very large company that things its owns the world) try to bully 
everyone else to accept what they want because they own the market. Luckily
for us this is not OASIS and IETF would not often accept such tactics, 
although its getting worth lately...

In any case BIND folks got properly punished for attempting to do it and
as long as they support standard way and inter-operate with other products
its fine; and if they think their proprietary way is better for when two
bind daemons talk to each other, that is fine too and I accept it.

>> Nobody should be producing product that "pretends" to be something else,
>> that itself would be a problem and may even be illegal if BIND name is
>> trademarked (and even if its not if somebody makes different product
>> that is using bind name and that product does not work or works differently,
>> it creates dillusion and bad reputation for makers of bind and so its
>> something ISC could legally demand to be stopped).
>
> BIND is an acronym of Berkeley Internet Name Daemon.  I've heard that
> Vixie claims a trademark on this, but it seems rather like the linux
> trademark issue of a few years ago. I didn't hear that they purchased the
> copyright from the University of California.  So, I don't think it is his
> to trademark, and it was a common term in use well before ISC existed.
> ISC didn't write BIND, but has only maintained and modified it over the
> years.  They own modifications, at most.

Well, Paul Vixie wrote bind and he started ISC later to provide more 
organization to his work and supporting it further, so I really dont
see a problem with consdering BIND to be ISC product even if original
acronym was more general (though I doubt he could get it trademarked
because of all that)..

> But even if they did purchase the copyright from Berkeley, we are talking
> about what amounts to packet signatures. Fair use allows one to create
> interoperable products. [DMCA 1201(f), I think].

Yes, interoperable products but in that case whoever is writing such thing
is responsible for completely emulating the original, i.e. if somebody
wants to create product that pretends to be BIND and it does AXFR, I would
expect such a product to do AXFR in BIND9 way!

> For example, many web browsers "pretend" to be other browsers.

I've just had a dialog with somebody else on this topic. IE pretending
to be Mozilla was part of the case Netscape brought against Microsoft.
Obviously it was settled, but if it was not, I have serious doubts of
Microsoft winning it, because they were using Mozilla's name (which is
trademark if I'm not mistaken too) without permission.

> There are also examples of packet signature changing, so that your linux 
> box appears to be a netbsd box, for instance.

That is done only for testing purposes. If all netbsd distros were to be 
shipped this way, you can expect linux people to complain loudly and they 
would be right.

Its also important to understand that when one product is emulating something
else then user must always know that its going on and what product its
emulating (so as not to create any confusion and not lead to incorrect
tech support requests to original).

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william at elan.net