From maradns at gmail.com Mon Apr 1 12:17:25 2013 From: maradns at gmail.com (Sam Trenholme) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2013 09:17:25 -0700 Subject: [MaraDNS list] Announcing a MaraDNS discussion board Message-ID: Hello, everyone, I am in the process of shutting down the mailing list and replacing it with a PhpBB discussion board. This new discussion board will have three sub-forums: 1) The contributer's forum The only members of the mailing list will be members who have made financial contributions to MaraDNS or who have done other work such as reporting security bugs (which get assigned CVE numbers), making patches for MaraDNS available, or contributing to the MaraDNS-ng project (which will soon have a Git tree). Indeed, this forum will have a sub-forum which will only contain MaraDNS patches. 2) The guest's forum This forum will be open to anyone and everyone. Clueful posts in this forum (read: Patches, useful "this host does not resolve" bug reports, etc.) will be moved to the contributer's forum, with the clueful poster marked as a "clueful poster". Other posts, such as requests for MaraDNS 0.5 support, will remain on this forum. 3) The leecher's forum This forum will be for the kinds of wannabe leachers posts which pass off as "hacking" these days. Postings talking about how piracy should be legal, conspiracy theories about some shadowy "copyright cartel", postings bragging about using adblock, even postings discussing using MaraDNS to block ads will be placed here. For example, this MaraDNS 2.0 recursive configuration snippet would be placed in the leecher's forum: http://maradns.org/deadwood/doc/my.current.blacklist The reason being because it has the following lines in it: # Those "mouse over text" ads (the ones where keywords are double- # underlined) are really annoying, since I like to move the mouse cursor # around while reading something; having part of what I read replaced by an # annoying mouseover ad annoys me to the point I don't want to read the # article any more. # (I also use a combination of click-to-flash and disabled animated GIFs # to block annoying animated ads. I don't block and sometimes even click # static ads; I understand that web sites need money to stay online.) root_servers["kontera.com."]="192.168.255.255" # Annoying mouseover ads root_servers["infolinks.com."]="192.168.255.255" # Annoying mouseover ads root_servers["intellitxt.com."]="192.168.255.255" # Annoying mouseover ads Since I only work on MaraDNS once a month, it will take me a while to implement this. Hopefully, this will be ready by next year this time, on April 1, 2014. - Sam From maradns at gmail.com Sat Apr 20 22:06:57 2013 From: maradns at gmail.com (Sam Trenholme) Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 19:06:57 -0700 Subject: [MaraDNS list] MaraDNS update: Article has survived Wikipedia deletion attempt Message-ID: I did not get a chance to update MaraDNS this month. The reason is because I already have devoted a few hours to MaraDNS earlier this month, fighting an incorrectly proposed request for deletion. Since I devoted so much time dealing with Wikipedia?s MaraDNS article, I did not get a chance to do any actual MaraDNS development this month. Maybe next month, but, then again, I am in the process of transitioning from working on MaraDNS once a month to once every other month. I probably will not devote time to MaraDNS again until June, unless a critical security bug with a CVE number is found. More information on the history of MaraDNS? article on the Wikipedia: http://cdt2.vk.tj From Bradley at NorthTech.US Sun Apr 21 00:42:28 2013 From: Bradley at NorthTech.US (Bradley D. Thornton) Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 21:42:28 -0700 Subject: [MaraDNS list] MaraDNS update: Article has survived Wikipedia deletion attempt In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51736E34.5060308@NorthTech.US> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160 On 04/20/2013 07:06 PM, Sam Trenholme wrote: > I did not get a chance to update MaraDNS this month. The reason is because > I already have devoted a few hours to MaraDNS earlier this month, fighting > an incorrectly proposed request for deletion. And don't forget that new forum you created too somewhere ;) > > Since I devoted so much time dealing with Wikipedia?s MaraDNS article, I > did not get a chance to do any actual MaraDNS development this month. Maybe > next month, but, then again, I am in the process of transitioning from > working on MaraDNS once a month to once every other month. I probably will > not devote time to MaraDNS again until June, unless a critical security bug > with a CVE number is found. I'm a little stymied by this. A decade ago, MaraDNS was a capable enterprise DNS solution - one which I myself deployed as the the primary DNS service for a few fortune 500 companies. But then, it kind of fell into, not bit rot, but certainly neglect. You even offered a few announcements a few years back that this was the case and more recently, even in your blog article about the wiki fiasco, that you are "winding down" the project. With that sort of varied history, and your intentions to 'wind down' the project, there seems to be an inference that people should look to other software solutions as a more viable alternative to continued consideration or use of MaraDNS. If the project does wind down, I seriously doubt that MaraDNS will survive in the wiki until your grandchildren are old enough to read. Certainly, there is much written about the product available at archive.org's wayback machine, but I sense that as proud as you are of your accomplishment you aren't really interested in seeing its legacy, or indeed usefulness, continue. This is a separate notion from the one that finds you offering limited time to work on the project, or release new, almost needed features in todays networking environment. Indeed, MaraDNS will remain for a very long time as a simple and effective home DNS server, but its viability in the enterprise has already waned to the point where many might say it's not suitable for consideration of deployment - this is just what I glean from reading your monologs; I have a different view, obviously, since I still deploy and utilize it in large scale networks. Personally, I think that although notability in semi recent press of the previous decade qualifies MaraDNS for inclusion in the wiki (for the time being), but you paint the picture of a dying product Sam. One that has little relevance or utility; and I'm not the only one who gleans this from your posts. Once the relevance and utility of the product falls below some nebulous level of significance, it will no doubt become a 'was', and eventually even deleted altogether from the wiki - like other once prominent open and closed source software products. One only needs to follow the rapid evolvement of the myriad of ERP/CRM systems playing musical chairs now in the wiki, and being deleted after forks or the projects cease active development. I get the impression, more often than not, that you tend to blog or make announcements based on your mood at the time, without ever going back and reading what you actually wrote. I could be wrong on that last point. You really might be trying to urge people to stop using MaraDNS. That's certainly how you've been coming across now for about the last year and half, or at least since losing the sponsorship to work on MaraDNS full time as you had hoped for not long ago. As is usually the case, should you choose to respond, it won't happen until... this time I gather, what, June? Kindest regards, - -- Bradley D. Thornton Manager Network Services NorthTech Computer TEL: +1.310.388.9469 (US) TEL: +44.203.318.2755 (UK) TEL: +41.43.508.05.10 (CH) http://NorthTech.US -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Find this cert at x-hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net iQEcBAEBAwAGBQJRc240AAoJEE1wgkIhr9j38wUIAK9lkX8InyThLXV8jdqlhUSD DO1pdmog0vtwQSs87dLOMb0QO0AlDhBHj9VJ2WQbQru1BKl/HW5V5dySI1wnGygQ EJUjmAOKZ93o2LzfI+oSQRi0ab7M5vtmdkCdyHTJLECs3hBJ7rSi6BOXLccOYK5L Q7p8+qu/vUtSp6gy94hG3Cm3IKTaPjVR4NxuShBF/yDtGZZ4n4GVXW99vSXrNaX+ /ed2lAyB1OZBPBW9D7rvkZunku3/rE4q57eoYxptgB5/WMeXaJULUjOW2TzIxTml qCqO775+0zYAVohvX37Nq+YvB0mnfWG+SPKy6yJUXPhMAtZ8WIjtRs7SKf7cQ7o= =WYvT -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From maradns at gmail.com Sun Apr 21 01:13:32 2013 From: maradns at gmail.com (Sam Trenholme) Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 22:13:32 -0700 Subject: [MaraDNS list] MaraDNS update: Article has survived Wikipedia deletion attempt In-Reply-To: <51736E34.5060308@NorthTech.US> References: <51736E34.5060308@NorthTech.US> Message-ID: Bradly, Bradly, my dear. TANSTAAFL. There ain?t no such thing as a free lunch. > I'm a little stymied by this. A decade ago, MaraDNS was a capable > enterprise DNS solution - one which I myself deployed as the the primary > DNS service for a few fortune 500 companies. MaraDNS ? or should I say, Deadwood ? is a better recursive DNS server than MaraDNS? recursion was 10 years ago. > But then, it kind of fell into, not bit rot, but certainly neglect. MaraDNS 1.0 came out then I returned to college. I then was getting a college degree, not making professional software ?for fun and for free? any more. Right after I graduated from college, I release MaraDNS 1.2, which offered a lot, including a completely new zone file format. > With that sort of varied history, and your intentions to 'wind down' the > project, there seems to be an inference that people should look to other > software solutions as a more viable alternative to continued > consideration or use of MaraDNS. Well, Bradly, I would love to develop MaraDNS for fun and for free so that people such as the companies can profit from my uncompensated hard work, but, you know, I have a wife and a kid to feed. I just can?t go to the grocery store and tell the cashier ?you know, I make this great piece of open source software, so you should give me free groceries?. Ditto with my landlord. > If the project does wind down, I seriously doubt that MaraDNS will > survive in the wiki until your grandchildren are old enough to read. You obviously don?t understand how the Wiki works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NTEMP ?once a topic has been the subject of "significant coverage" in accordance with the general notability guideline, it does not need to have ongoing coverage.? Again, Bradly, I will not work for you or for your enterprises for free. No, they will not delete the MaraDNS article 10 years later...it is notable today, so it will be notable (using the Wiki?s definition of ?notable?) 10 or 100 years from today. Thank you for playing. The bottom line is this Bradly: A decade ago, DNS *was* something simple enough that a single developer could write a viable DNS server in their spare time for fun and for free. That?s why we got djbdns. That?s why we got MaraDNS. But then DNS became a monstrosity ? namely DNSSEC. I would love to give MaraDNS DNSSEC, but it is going to take serious cash to happen: http://maradns.org/products.html There is not a single recursive DNS server with DNSSEC out there that was not funded. Both BIND and Unbound ? the only two recursive DNS servers with DNSSEC ? got serious corporate and government funding. Those people did not deploy DNSSEC for fun and for free. And it?s pretty damn unfair for you to ask me to do so. There has not been a single release or update to djbdns for well over a decade. Despite not getting funding, I made a new MaraDNS release earlier this year, and will probably make another one next year. MaraDNS is getting updates ? This year?s release updated MaraDNS to work with RedHat/CentOS 6. Trust me, Bradly, I have asked employers, during interviews, whether they would be willing to pay for me to work on MaraDNS all day one a week or once every other week. I have yet to find an employer willing to accommodate this request. Ask yourself this, Bradly: Why is it that all these Fortune 500 companies are, instead of paying hard-working developers like me to develop something like MaraDNS, are instead increasing their CEO pay to ridiculous levels? Why is it that we live in a world where companies are rewarded for massive layoffs of hard-working employees? Why is it that income inequality in the US has increased considerably in the last decades? > I get the impression, more often than not, that you tend to blog or make > announcements based on your mood at the time, without ever going back > and reading what you actually wrote. No, Bradly, I have not. The bottom line is this: I have been very consistent since my 2009 announcement at http://samiam.org/blog/old-200910-grow_up.html ?I'm growing up and realize that there are more important things than making programs for fun and for free. Yes, I do want to finish up Deadwood mainly to put closure on the project, but I don't think I'll do any MaraDNS development besides basic bug fixes after MaraDNS 2.0 comes out.? Yes, I had a funding drive two years ago, and yes I did add features to MaraDNS and Deadwood as a result of the money raised from that funding drive. But it was not enough money to sustain full-time MaraDNS development. > That's certainly how you've been coming across now for about the last > year and half, or at least since losing the sponsorship to work on > MaraDNS full time as you had hoped for not long ago. I never had sponsorship to work on MaraDNS full time. TL;DR: Threats to stop using MaraDNS or to delete the MaraDNS Wikipedia article will not make me work more on MaraDNS for fun and for free. - Sam From Bradley at NorthTech.US Sun Apr 21 02:33:04 2013 From: Bradley at NorthTech.US (Bradley D. Thornton) Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 23:33:04 -0700 Subject: [MaraDNS list] MaraDNS update: Article has survived Wikipedia deletion attempt In-Reply-To: References: <51736E34.5060308@NorthTech.US> Message-ID: <51738820.4030405@NorthTech.US> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160 On 04/20/2013 10:13 PM, Sam Trenholme wrote: > Bradly, Bradly, my dear. TANSTAAFL. There ain?t no such thing as a free lunch. Yes there is. And whenever I've been able to give back to the community I have. Even now I continue to provide free services for select causes and organizations, sometimes with limited ability, other times, with ample capability for most or all of their needs. And I'm about to get all biblical on you now lol. I'm a sinner. I'm a dirty deviant, filthy minded whiskey loving, unrepentant baptist sinner who sleeps wherever my mini-me points, and proud of it - which prolly makes me a bad christian too lol. I don't feel guilty for being a hedonistic heavy metal head-bangin' hound and I'm not about to apologize for that or the statement I'm about to make. "If the whole of the bible was reduced to one single verse, that being Leviticus 19:10 - then the bible would embody what I believe its intended message was always supposed to be. > >> I'm a little stymied by this. A decade ago, MaraDNS was a capable >> enterprise DNS solution - one which I myself deployed as the the primary >> DNS service for a few fortune 500 companies. > > MaraDNS ? or should I say, Deadwood ? is a better recursive DNS server > than MaraDNS? recursion was 10 years ago. > Deadwood is awesome. And tiny. And extremely durable too. > > Right after I graduated from college, I release > MaraDNS 1.2, which offered a lot, including a completely new zone file > format. That's prolly why there are a lot of haters out there. That's also what drew me to adopt the use of your product ;) > >> With that sort of varied history, and your intentions to 'wind down' the >> project, there seems to be an inference that people should look to other >> software solutions as a more viable alternative to continued >> consideration or use of MaraDNS. > > Well, Bradly, I would love to develop MaraDNS for fun and for free so > that people such as the companies can profit from my uncompensated > hard work, but, you know, I have a wife and a kid to feed. I just > can?t go to the grocery store and tell the cashier ?you know, I make > this great piece of open source software, so you should give me free > groceries?. Ditto with my landlord. > I'm just saying that you are coming across as... I'll just quote myself again: "...there seems to be an inference that people should look to other software solutions as a more viable alternative to continued consideration or use of MaraDNS." And it does often seem so to me. I wouldn't say it if it didn't seem to me that such is the substance of your message. And with your clarification, it is indeed not your intent. But that is how it has been interpreted at times. > > No, they will not delete the MaraDNS article 10 years > later...it is notable today, so it will be notable (using the Wiki?s > definition of ?notable?) 10 or 100 years from today. Thank you for > playing. I don't believe that. And I don't believe that you truly believe it either. It's not likely to happen with your continued intervention though :) > > > There has not been a single release or update to djbdns for well over > a decade. I'm not going to talk about that product. I never liked it and discussions as to the merit of it only begets flame wars ;) > > >> I get the impression, more often than not, that you tend to blog or make >> announcements based on your mood at the time, without ever going back >> and reading what you actually wrote. > > No, Bradly, I have not. I gathered that. It's the defeatist cynicism, the tone of melancholy desperation, or... I don't know really how to convey it, I can put my finger on it but I can't describe how your frustration comes through in a negative tone though. It is disheartening to read, from my perspective as someone who champions your creation. > > ?I'm growing up and realize that there are more important things than > making programs for fun and for free. Yes, I do want to finish up > Deadwood mainly to put closure on the project, but I don't think I'll > do any MaraDNS development besides basic bug fixes after MaraDNS 2.0 > comes out.? > See? You're not winding down. slowing down. Sure. I can appreciate the dilemma and empathize with you. But your frustration vented here amongst your supporters is kind of alienating. I feel for you Sam. I really do. As you know I've slipped some things the MaraDNS way a couple of times over the years. I was happy to do so too, asking nothing in particular in return... Well, maybe I had hoped that you might take in a night at a sushi bar or something. Maybe I'm not like other folks. I tend to believe that even 5 or 10 bucks makes a difference when enough poor folks like me express their gratitude. I know that open source projects make a comfortable living based only on voluntary contributions for the authors of dozens of chrome and firefox extensions, enough for these folks to live well and work full time on those projects. And I concur that people are just lame. It's as if they think BIND is the only thing out there. It's sad, and DNS, being the backbone of human addressable indexing is largely unappreciated by corporations who use it, admins who deploy it, and oblivious end users to boot who thing all searches are performed at youtube. > > I never had sponsorship to work on MaraDNS full time. I could be wrong, but I could swear I remember you announcing first that you 'couldn't' work on MaraDNS due to a possible conflict of interest with an employer and then later you were excited about the likelyhood that you thought you had found a sponsor to fund and support a major effort on your part to work on it. Sorry, my bad. > > TL;DR: Threats to stop using MaraDNS or to delete the MaraDNS > Wikipedia article will not make me work more on MaraDNS for fun and > for free. They've already achieved that. This is what your announcement was all about. I don't really care if MaraDNS is in the wiki, although I'm glad it is and think it should be, but wikimedia is a project subject to fickle whims, as you well pointed out in your blog article ;) Sam, you do good work. You've created and published a wonderful product. I wish I could do more for you at this time but I cannot. I hope my sincere appreciation for your effort at least helps you feel appreciated. As long as you're not hungry, a smile can go a long way :) - -- Bradley D. Thornton Manager Network Services NorthTech Computer TEL: +1.310.388.9469 (US) TEL: +44.203.318.2755 (UK) TEL: +41.43.508.05.10 (CH) http://NorthTech.US -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Find this cert at x-hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net iQEcBAEBAwAGBQJRc4ggAAoJEE1wgkIhr9j3pHIIAK9REqcIKdLaJUp0JpTOmzFL BCe1h3lrzVC9o3xXhYHlibao4buq68xoN18BlJt6hlO8fraM7rp/GhsEZD95hE8K YlB3R9bRwtTl9sQhVksAsQqdqu0R/jEGOdiLBwAYoKPyio1X/d7wsZaj1PwixJow u/Ek3hGqhAgzs03oPz/8+E6bIHL98o983hq3klYt143AOT1PsE2kD7Z76DZbjY/h GNTIg2wjaCRosRXyGT+PXLJ2UOpgPa9yPl5hO2VcBtqPUxGHvu8fnNo9xBLjA5lh PpN0RMwPaRjGauoP7TXiHIPuiAwbnymAr07jbwtbb7Jwq1JwXUagJRNWHRR8gVE= =ZgCi -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From maradns at gmail.com Sun Apr 21 16:40:39 2013 From: maradns at gmail.com (Sam Trenholme) Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:40:39 -0700 Subject: [MaraDNS list] MaraDNS update: Article has survived Wikipedia deletion attempt In-Reply-To: <51738820.4030405@NorthTech.US> References: <51736E34.5060308@NorthTech.US> <51738820.4030405@NorthTech.US> Message-ID: >> Bradly, Bradly, my dear. TANSTAAFL. There ain?t no such thing as a free lunch. > > Yes there is. Let me word that differently: When money isn?t passing hands, I have no obligation (legal, moral, or otherwise) to implement features in MaraDNS. I feel I had a moral obligation to finish Deadwood before declaring MaraDNS finished, which I did. I feel I have a moral obligation to patch MaraDNS against security bugs with CVE numbers. Beyond that, I don?t see any moral obligations. > "If the whole of the bible was reduced to one single verse, that being > Leviticus 19:10 - then the bible would embody what I believe its > intended message was always supposed to be. I think it is better summarized in Leviticus 19:18 -- the one Jesus quotes in Luke 10:26-27. Anyway, that?s about feeding the homeless. In the Biblical sense, the entire Internet and open source is a luxury and not needed to live. While we are on the subject of the Bible, I feel the biggest failure of Judeo-Christianity here in the early 21st century is being on the wrong side of history with regards to gay rights. > Deadwood is awesome. And tiny. And extremely durable too. You got that right. Just one point: Deadwood (and, yes, MaraDNS 1) was the only DNS server that has always been immune to the ghost domain attack that made the rounds a year ago (Jian Jiang; Jinjin Liang; Kang Li; Jun Li; Haixin Duan; Jianping Wu (2012), Ghost Domain Names: Revoked Yet Still Resolvable, p. 10) >> There has not been a single release or update to djbdns for well over >> a decade. > > I'm not going to talk about that product. I never liked it and > discussions as to the merit of it only begets flame wars ;) I will say this much about djbdns: When MaraDNS 1.0 came out, on June 21, 2002, there finally was an open-source alternative to BIND. I have little love for djbdns advocates; one of the very first emails I got when I announced MaraDNS development was a djbdns advocate who flamed me, telling me it was pointless to make a DNS server because djbdns was good enough. > I gathered that. It's the defeatist cynicism Agreed, actually. The path to prosperity is to look forward and think positive. Indeed, if you go to http://samiam.org, I don?t even mention MaraDNS on my home page any more. As a former dot-com employee, seeing the dot-com party fall apart in the early 2000s was very disheartening. In a way, I was very lucky...I was still really young when I got my dot-com layoff. I wasn?t get married or have a mortgage to deal with when I found myself on the street. Indeed, I had saved up some money in the bank and was able to go to Mexico for 4 months to learn Spanish, followed by returning to college to get my degree. After working in a Mexico for a few years riding out the post-dot-com crash as well as the big crash of 2008-2009, I finally was able to return to the US and get a good job again--not dot-com good, mind you, but pays enough to make the rent. I was able to get a good job because MaraDNS game me a strong enough reputation to find work. But, yes, the post-dot-com era made me very cynical. Something that, alas, sometimes comes out in my writings. > Sam, you do good work. You've created and published a wonderful product. > I wish I could do more for you at this time but I cannot. I hope my > sincere appreciation for your effort at least helps you feel > appreciated. As long as you're not hungry, a smile can go a long way :) Thank you for the kind words. I am proud of MaraDNS. And, I will not say "never". New releases of MaraDNS will continue to come out, and it's something I use every day to both resolve domains on the Internet (with Deadwood) as well as resolving my own handful of domains. - Sam