[dns-operations] Update: FreeBSD and the slaving of the root zone

[Paul Vixie]

doug wrote:

> The closest thing to a "consensus statement" that we're going to get
> is from a message that was posted today:
> 
>	As another person with no ax to grind, my sense is that this was a
>	professional albeit heated discussion.  Briefly, it seems to me that
>	Doug introduced changes with no prior discussion - this was his only
>	real fault, and for this he has appropriately apologized.

i'd quibble over whether it was a "professional" discussion.  doug was rather
obstinate and very defensive.  and as to the main error being that the change
was made without prior discussion, apparently it was discussed in the freebsd
community, where consensus was against making the change.  if so, then doug
was "legislating from the bench", essentially using his position as a freebsd
committer in charge of BIND integration, as a way to advance a personal agenda
rather than as a way to lead and serve the community.  if so, bad ju-ju.

doug continued:

> The result of the heated discussion was that the slave zone thingy was
> turned into an option rather than the default.  As far as I am concerned,
> this is an entirely satisfactory resolution, and shows that the discussions
> had their desired effect.

i am not satisfied.  RFC 1035's treatment of tcp session state is that when
resources are scarce, old sessions are killed off in favour of new sessions.
so, if large numbers of nonwizards enable doug's new non-default configuration
they will create a statistical likelihood of {pulls new zone unsuccessfully;
does not notice it directly; has problems that will seem unrelated}.  there is
no reason to have this option present -- anyone wizardly enough to know that
they can benefit from this and to be able to know whether it's helping and to
know when it's hurting, should signal this wizardliness by typing something in.

> 	If you're never wrong, you're not trying hard enough

if doug had proposed this here or on namedroppers you'd've heard the reasons
why it wasn't a good change, and would have had a chance to outline your
motives and discover that the problem you think you're solving has better
solitions (to the extent that it is a measurable problem, which is, not very.)

so "if you won't listen, you'll be wrong a lot, and folks will yell at you."