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

[Sam Trenholme]

>> 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