Open Letter to D-Link about their NTP vandalism

Sat Apr 8 00:30:31 UTC 2006

On Apr  7,  6:49pm ras at e-gerbil.net wrote:
> *sigh* Yes yes everyone loves a good "large stupid company screws the 
> little guy by sticking their small/free service into a commercial product" 
> story, but unfortunately none of these solutions are very pragmatic. If I 
> hosted an NTP server and dlink put it in a default query list of a default 
> firmware, and then I asked them to pay my Equinix bill for the next 5 
> years, I would fully expect them to provide a nice little ascii diagram of 

That isn't what he asked.  He explained the problem to them, asked
them to rectify it, and their response was "here, talk to our lawyers".
Which is merely a discrete way of saying "f*** off, we're bigger".

Infer at will, please, if you will.

I know phk personally (give or take a little, we're from the same
country, and have both participated vigorously in the same UNIX user
group [yes, there have been such entities]); for those who are unaware
of his credentials, let me cut and paste the following from the FreeBSD
GBDE manual page:

HISTORY
     This software was developed for the FreeBSD Project by Poul-Henning Kamp
     and NAI Labs, the Security Research Division of Network Associates, Inc.
     under DARPA/SPAWAR contract N66001-01-C-8035 (``CBOSS''), as part of the
     DARPA CHATS research program.

AUTHORS
     Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at FreeBSD.org>

So for the benefit of any xenophobes here, rest assured, he's cleared
for a NASA-powered Mars-walk when the time comes.

As for the issue at hand, I can only support phk, it's an open and shut
case.  Of course, anybody and everybody is free to argue that if one
walks through Central Park (or whatever your local Mugger's Delight is
called), one is merely fighting a losing battle.  At the end of the day,
however, it becomes a question about what behaviour we deem acceptable,
whether or not fighting back seems fruitful.

There's an old Scandinavian proverb (quite possibly of foreign origin)
which simply says ""Those who keep quiet, agree".

Do you agree?

  -- Per