Re:MaraDNS: A small open-source DNS server
by mike_d on Monday September 04, 2023 @05:51PM
(#37385460)
Heh. I'd actually be super curious how much of a base linux system is still "actively maintained" by that metric. I gave up tilting at windmills trying to get the default whois clients in any of the major distros updated after a few months of trying.
Re:MaraDNS: A small open-source DNS server
by teddyh on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @02:48AM
(#37388646)
I know that Debian, as a rule, removes packages which are not maintained “upstream”.
Regarding Whois clients specifically, it seems that Debian maintains its own Whois client: <https://github.com/rfc1036/whois> This is something which Debian usually does not do, and when it happens, it usually means that there is no updated maintained version available, but the software is too important to remove.
It existed, and even still exists, since people still buy and drive it. But nobody would use that “BIND 10” release today.
This is because software is different from cars, in that you need to use an up-to-date version. You therefore depend on there being a current development branch.
In this way, software is not like cars; it’s more like something like a TV channel or a magazine subscription. If a magazine stops publishing issues, or a TV channel stops transmitting, you wouldn’t say “Omni Magazine is…” or “The Festival TV channel is…”, even though video recordings and magazine issues still exist.