Alan Barrett writes:
If Paul Vixie said that,
``After RFC 2308, empty nonterminals are signalled with NXDOMAIN.''
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=199912080700.XAA18392%40bb.rc.vix.com
he was wrong. His mistake does not amount to a change of the protocol.
Let me get this straight. After the BIND company
(1) issues an RFC that clearly allows NXDOMAIN in this situation,
(2) tells a new implementor that NXDOMAIN in this situation is fine,
(3) publishes BIND 9, which uses NXDOMAIN in this situation, and
(4) allows this use of NXDOMAIN to be deployed for four years,
you think it's perfectly reasonable for the BIND company to change its
mind and publish a new RFC saying---without a shred of justification---
that NXDOMAIN in this situation is prohibited?
If the answer to my question in 1999 had been ``Don't use NXDOMAIN,'' I
would have done the extra work to generate NODATA. But Vixie said that
NXDOMAIN was allowed (in fact, required). So I used NXDOMAIN.
Now, four years later, the BIND company is trying to force my users into
a completely unnecessary patch cycle. If the BIND company wants to screw
BIND users, I don't particularly care; but having the BIND company abuse
the standards process to punish _my_ users is completely unacceptable.
---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago