[MaraDNS list] MaraDNS update: Article has survived Wikipedia deletion attempt

Sun Apr 21 02:33:04 EDT 2013

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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

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