Re: Public domain software (Re: comments on Jim's and Jeff's addenda to the gTLD MOU)

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com>]

Andi and all,

andi payn wrote:
> 
> Jim Dixon:
> >> All over the world there are usenet news machines taking hundreds of
> >> thousands of hits a day.  These are large, powerful, reliable machines
> >> using public domain software.  I don't know any news machine using
> >> commercial software that can outperform machines using public domain
> >> software.
> 
> Jeff Williams:
> >  Welll....  I don't know about that, Jim.
> 
> >  I must agree that much of the third generation public domain
> >software is nearly as good as Commercial software.  Reliability is
> >the only area that I might differ.
> 
> Well, of all of the OSs that I commonly use--MacOS 7.5.5 and 8.0, WinNT 4.0,
> Win95, BeOS PR, OS/2 Warp 4, Solaris 2.x, and Linux-pmac 2.24, it's the
> Linux-pmac that's most stable and reliable. Not only is it free, public
> domain software, but the PowerMac port is currently in alpha release, and
> it's still more stable than the other OSs that I use. Similarly, apache (the
> alpha version of the port, running under linux-pmac) is more stable and
> reliable as a web server (as well as being much more configurable) than any
> of the servers I've used from Apple, Microsoft, and Netscape. Public domain
> web browsers tend to be more stable than Netscape or IE, although this is
> less of a valid comparison, because they're also much more limited in
> functionality...

  Well I believe that Jim was refering to Doamin managment related
software.
> 
> More to the point, I have fewer problems using bind and other public domain
> programs under Linux-pmac to handle DNS and other Internet connectivity
> issues for my network at home (using netatalk and samba and everything else
> that tends to make things more complicated) than using NT Server 4.0 with
> other commercial software for the same purpose at work.

  Hummmmm?  Intreating.  This has not been my experiance compleatly,
but I will admit that public donain software is very good overall.
As it realtes to Domain Managment I would beg to differ to a degree.
Can you tell me wht Public domain software for Domain managment
you are refering to?
> 
> In many cases, public domain software is not as reliable as commercial
> software, but in many cases it's actually more reliable--mostly because
> fixes to bugs are publically discussed and fixed very quickly. I'm not sure
> which would be the case in terms of shared registry software. That's
> something for CORE to look into, of course.

  Exactly.  I don't know of any shared registry software for DNS that
is highly reliable.  Maybe jim Dixon can help here?  JIm, Any
suggestions?

Regards,
-- 
Jeffrey A. Williams
DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java Development Eng.
Information Eng. Group. IEG. INC. 
Phone :913-294-2375 (v-office)
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com