It is complicated. I've investigated a great deal over the last year.
Security patches don't add new functionality / new APIs with their
attendant documentation fixes, SDK revision, and so on. Here we're both
adding new APIs and creating new GUI features.
With security patches, the compelling need for timeliness of release
means that regrettably less than full regressions are done on the
changes (and we not infrequently get caught on that, to the annoyance of
our customers). Compelling timeliness is not the case here: full
regressions are called for, which are unbelievably expensive.
It's also worth nothing that we make no pretence that the Win 9x
platforms are 'secure'; the significant majority of the security issues
we've fixed are for Win XP, W2K3, W2K, and NT. However, the change in
DNS functionality here likely needs support more than that (to get MUA
coverage).
Were one to try to make the case for releasing fixes in spite of these
issues, the question of "What are the work arounds?" always comes up (it
does with ALL bug fixes / feature change requests, even the security
changes). Here, the work around (use TXT records) is only very
marginally less desirable than the fix, and so consequently the change
request is not at all compelling.
Your thought about 'a patch for Outlook / Exchange' is not relevant
here. Office has it's own update vehicle
(http://office.microsoft.com/productuypdates); Exchange has no
auto-update service at present (service packs are manually posted and
downloaded). Neither Office nor Exchange (nor, indeed, anyone else) can
release OS components, and for many reasons, including legal ones,
WindowsUpdate cannot release non-OS components.
Bob
PS: The idea of doing RFC3579 in a patch was humor, right?
-----Original Message-----
From: Yakov Shafranovich [mailto:research(_at_)solidmatrix(_dot_)com]
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2004 12:49 PM
To: william(at)elan.net
Cc: Bob Atkinson; Meng Weng Wong; Greg Connor; IETF MARID WG
Subject: Re: suggested new RRtype experiment
I would add to this that WindowsUpdate makes releasing such patches
very
easy. Since I assume that MSFT guys were planning on releasing a patch
for Outlook/Exchange anyway at some point for CID support, throwing in
DNS support might not be more complicated.
While we are at this topic anyway, perhaps MSFT can look into
supporting
RFC 3579.
Yakov