
The DJB legacy - zdw
http://skarnet.org/software/skalibs/djblegacy.html
======
brazzledazzle
Perhaps I'm projecting my own experiences and mistakes but it seems like DJB's
software and its comparative lack of success despite its superiority is a
lesson in why it's more important to build consensus than it is to be right.
No matter how correct you are or how good your solution is if you don't have
the soft skills people might gladly go with a sub-par or even wrong solution.

I do think/hope that long term his software will win out though.

~~~
dozzie
Except DJB's software was often not right (Qmail was a major offender against
SMTP protocol specification for a long time, until it finally got forgotten by
most of the sysadmins) or otherwise sub-par (djbdns lacked sensible zone
transfers, even non-incremental ones).

~~~
lightlyused
Qmail is an offender against smtp protocol specs? New one on me, still using
it and it works well.

Zone transfers? Moving data is best done by other unix utilities, not
monolithic programs like bind.

~~~
dozzie
> Qmail is an offender against smtp protocol specs? New one on me,

You must be using it for several years at most. In the old(ish) times, when
there were just Exim 3, Postfix, Qmail, and Sendmail, Qmail was getting quite
large flak from mail admins on various forums and newsgroups. Now, not so
much, but not because it got better (it didn't), but virtually nobody uses it
anymore.

> Zone transfers? Moving data is best done by other unix utilities, not
> monolithic programs like bind.

Oh yes, certainly. Let's do the same to replication in databases and directory
services (like LDAP).

------
qwertyuiop924
this is a great article. Funnily enough, I just posted something from the same
site:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12600807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12600807).

