[anticristi]

Unfortunately, some of BIND's complexity is accidental. BIND took the controversial decision to act both as an authoritative DNS server and a resolver. Yes, they both talk DNS, but their role and risk profile is so different, it would have been better to have two development tracks.

[icedchai]

In the old days (90's and earlier), nobody really looked at it that way. The early ISPs I'm familiar with typically ran open resolvers, which happened to also be authoritative DNS servers. I ran BIND as an open resolver for probably 15 years on my home network.

[danielhlockard]

I gotta agree with you - I have been running services on the internet for 13 years now. I learned bind, I loved bind, I didn't think at all about separating what it did. If you knew its config file syntax, you could make it do it all, and easily.