[dns-operations] knot-dns

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 06:05:26AM +0700, Roland Dobbins wrote:
> said vendor's perspective, I'm here to tell you that all this preaching
> about avoiding monoculture is a sideshow compared to the real issues faced
> every day in the trenches.
> 
> If we could ever get to the point where a monoculture was the biggest
> challenge we face, we'd be a lot better off than we are today.

It seems to me that these two things could both be true and still not
a good reason to avoid monoculture.  

Many things that people claim are "avoiding monoculture" don't
actually do that.  One of the long-standing worries I've had, for
instance, about the DNS is that there are so few people working on it,
and so many people of them have moved around among the various
organizations, that we might have an effective monoculture anyway.
(We have stumbled over this on a few occasions, when everyone did
something the same way even though that wasn't what the specifications
said.)

> Worrying about software monoculture at this juncture is like worrying about
> urban planning when you don't even have indoor plumbing.

That's actually one of the best times to worry about urban planning.
The _worst_ time to think about planning is when you've already got a
lot of built infrastructure.  I'm not sure how this metaphor helps us
understand about monoculture, therefore.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com