Debian/Ubuntu: Why was the service renamed from bind9 to named?

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

On 7/20/2020 4:05 PM, Mark Andrews wrote:

>
>
>
> Distributions also need to look at their own practices.  They ask us
> to supply long term support but do not actually integrate the
> maintenance releases but instead cherry-pick just the security fixes.
> Maintenance is not just security fixes.  That means that we keep
> seeing bug reports that need to be diagnosed about bugs we have fixed
> years ago.   That really isn’t a good use of peoples time.  Not ours,
> not the distributions maintainers nor the users time.  Is there
> little wonder that we stop producing bug fixes releases for old
> version when the distributions don’t use them?
>

Those kinds of bug reports need to be kicked back to the user with a
"refer to distro maintainer"

But truthfully you are proving my point.  The simple fact is that bind
will compile WITHOUT using a FreeBSD port.  Linux is 10 times worse 
because they aren't even including the c compiler or development tools
anymore.  But many "systemadmins" out there think they are Unix admins
yet are afraid to compile programs.  They will go to the FreeBSD port or
the Linux precompiled apt-get stuff.  The reason is more and more
non-technical people are getting their hands on this stuff.

This is a bit like the development of the automobile.  When the Model T
came out it came with a toolbox and a big book that allowed the owner to
completely troubleshoot and fix anything that went wrong with the car.
But gradually as more and more people bought cars you had more people
who didn't know squat about cars buying them.  So Ford stopped shipping
the manual and made it an extra cost item.

Nowadays Ford and Chevy don't even sell a manual at all anymore. 
Instead you have to get an alldata subscription to get access to the
service manual.  And if you stop paying the subscription you have no 
more manual.  But a running shop is always going to be paying a 
subscription so it's not a problem for them.  For the DIYers they
can get a 3 day alldatadiy subscription then spend 3 hours printing 
every page of the manual but maybe 1 out of 10,000 car buyers ever
does this.

Microsoft ran into this problem and had to split windows into a server
and desktop version.  Right after that happened "windows admins" who
knew the desktop only were fine.  But today all the MS server 
applications have to be controlled via the command line via powershell, 
plus the server version of the OS is 4 times more expensive and both
these things tend to chase away the people who aren't system admin
types who are willing to get down and dirty and technical.

Linux did this as well although the "server versions" of the 
distributions are horrendously lacking.  FreeBSD really
should do this but they don't likely have enough people working on the
distro.  So they make it so that the non-tech types can use it
and expect that the admin types know better.

None of these solutions are really solutions.  The real solution would
be for the users to get more educated.  But the majority of people don't
really care about an OS they just use it as a platform to run the 
software that they do care about.  Thus creating the means for gigantic
DDoS networks since none of them bother patching their OSes.

BIND chose the path of servicing the needs of the people who knew what
they were doing.  Unbound went the other direction and chose the path
of servicing the non-technical users.  There's more non-techs than 
educated people so
sooner or later paths are going to diverge.  It always makes me laugh to
read these flame wars from the non-techs who think that just because 
their simple-and-not-configurable programs work for them on the
desktop that they should work on the server and the world should switch
to them.  Whaah Whaah Whaah the real world is complicated, simplify it
for me or I'm gonna have a tantrum.  We have one of those dunsels in the
White House in the USA right now.

The BIND developers should
forget about the non-techs and continue servicing the people who know 
what they are doing and laugh also.

Ted