[rescue] Alternatives to BIND?

[Steve Sandau]

You make some very good points. As a non-programmer end-user, though, I
might be interested in whether someone (with abilities I don't have!) is
still working on improving/fixing the project. If it is useful as is,
that's good; I may use it, but if it needs work, I like to know that
someone is working on it. If it's not useful as is, and noone is
activvely developing it, I'll be less interested. (That is definitely
due to my lack of ability in C.)

I'm not greedy. I can't believe the amazing things that folks code and
make available for free. I have no right to expect anything of any
author who makes his work available via GPL or similar. But it is nice
to know where a project might be heading. If I could write more than
"hello world" in C, I would feel differently. ;) But right now, I am
dependent on peope who actually *write* software for making things work.

Just my thoughts as a user and not a programmer, not meant to start any
heated exchanges or provoke any arguments. The fact that things like
Linux, apache, BIND and so on even exist still amazes (and pleases!) me
no end.

"Greg A. Woods" wrote:
> 
> [ On , December 8, 2001 at 18:04:14 (-0800), Gregory Leblanc wrote: ]
> > Subject: Re: [rescue] Alternatives to BIND?
> >
> > Maybe not, but if there's no activity, then who cares if it's officially
> > abandoned or not?
> 
> You do (that's a "royal you", i.e. for some value of "you", a being
> interested in using free software and in particular in need of something
> to do what the software in question claims to do).
> 
> One of the primary reasons for using free software in the first place is
> that you're not beholden to the author (or other maintainers).  You get
> free software in its "pure" form, unencumbered (i.e. source code), and
> that means you can do whatever you need to do with it to make it useful
> for your purposes.
> 
> Free software is not "product".  It has no idea what "market share" is.
> Once it has been written it just simply is, it simply exists, and it
> will continue to exist forever more no matter what happens to its author
> or caretakers, or even to its other users.
> 
> You don't care about the non-existant "market share" of free software
> because you get it in its pure source form -- it doesn't need market
> share to be viable or supportable.  It's irrelevent whether you have the
> skills to support it yourself or not so long as you have the means to
> employ those who do, and there's no real shortage of those with the
> requisite skills.  If you don't think you are able to support your own
> use of free software then I recommend you go only with proprietary
> software.
> 
> Yes there are economies of scale when more people use some given piece
> of free software, and when more programmers understand its internals,
> but these are relativley insignificant savings (unlike what happens with
> proprietary software).  Even if some never heard of before software is
> freely released and the next day its author is run over by a bus and
> parts this dreary world forever, there are any number of free software
> enthusiasts out there who will help debug and support it if for no other
> reason than the challenge such a task presents (and that's even if no
> one of them takes it under their wing and explicitly maintains it and
> produces new releases).  In other words it's even possible to get
> essentially free support for abandoned, but free, software!
> 
> You use a piece of free software if it does what you want it to do and
> because you have the source code for it, and for no other reasons (well,
> OK, maybe if there's no other better[*] free alternative available...).
>         [*] "better" here means better at satisfying your requirements.
> 
> The only reason you ever care if a freeware project has "activity" or
> not is when you've heard tell there's some new feature or bug fix in the
> works you've been aching to get your hands on, and you don't currently
> have the resources to implement it yourself (and/or you don't want to
> waste those resources when you might not do as good a job as the author
> is apparently doing in parallel or some such).
> 
> Any free software is alive and well so long as it has even one sole user
> left using it anywhere.  Note I said nothing about the author/maintainer.
> 
> > Just that lack in and of itself, perhaps not.  But any other, uhm,
> > discrepancy, coupled with that, is.  I certainly think that ignoring the
> > software packages that Bill was looking at was a good idea.
> 
> What kind of "discrepancy" could you possibly be thinking of?  Either
> you're talking sillyness, or you're talking about Bill's real-world
> requirements vs. the capabilities of the pacakge(s) in question.  Adding
> politics of any kind, emotions, or other mumbo-jumbo to the equation is
> a waste of time and effort and doesn't solve Bill's real-world problems
> any better.
> 
> --
>                                                                 Greg A. Woods
> 
> +1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
> Planix, Inc. <woods at planix.com>; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird <woods at weird.com>
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-- 
Steve Sandau
ssandau at bath.tmac.com