[rgkpz]

"All software has bugs" is the most meaningless statement ever. It is just used for bonding with fellow bug writers who sit at a virtual campfire and muse about inevitabilities.

Demonstrably some software has fewer bugs, and its authors are often hated, especially if they are a lone author like Bernstein. Because it must not happen!

Projects with useless churn and many bug reports are more popular because only activity matters, not quality.

[dc396]

If DJB is "hated", it isn't because he's a lone author (Linus Torvalds was once a lone author and I don't think he was hated). It's because he can be an asshole. To quote George Bernard Shaw, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

[strenholme]

DJB is a lot of things, and I have great respect for him, even though I feel he didn’t responsibly maintain Qmail/DJBdns/Publicfile. He made MaraDNS more secure because I carefully read his documentation—I got the idea to have a random source port to give MaraDNS more security from him, which means MaraDNS was unscathed when DNS spoofing was independently discovered in 2007.

The point DJB made was this: It was possible for a skilled C programmer to make a server with few security holes. Even though that’s not as relevant now, with Rust having most of the speed of C and security built in, it did make the Internet a safer place for many years. I remember using Qmail and DJBdns to make the servers at the small company I worked for at the time more secure.

[shermantanktop]

“Fellow bug writers” is everyone. People who write fewer bugs exist, and a lone few who write many fewer.

I haven’t noticed antipathy, but I have noticed skepticism. I assume people with outlier records in any field get some extra inspection.

If it becomes jealousy-fueled not-picking, those people are insecure jerks. But unusual track records are worth understanding.

[vasco]

> Demonstrably some software has fewer bugs

You literally write fewer instead of none, therefore agreeing with the sentence you claimed to say is meaningless.

[zx8080]

> "All software has bugs" is the most meaningless statement ever.

It's not! It's the foundation of all dev AI products marketing.

[zamadatix]

"All software has bugs" so "be wary of the one trying to say they haven't had any in 3 years" not so "I guess all are equal". For extremely low security bug rates either the scope is extremely narrow, the claim is dubious, or the project is a massive effort which the community talks about directly in posts rather than plugs (e.g. curl).

[strenholme]

DJB, with Qmail and DjbDNS (as well as Publicfile, which didn’t catch on in an era of CGI scripts), showed that one could have (mostly) security bug free software without the scope being “extremely narrow”, and without the claim being “dubious”.

It’s not normal for software to be so poorly written, one doubts the claim that a security bug hasn’t been found in over three years. If one thinks the claim of no security bugs of consequence in three years is dubious, feel free to do a security audit of MaraDNS (or DjbDNS, which I also will take responsibility for even though my software is, if you will, a “competitor” to DjbDNS), and report any bugs you find.

Speaking of DJB, DjbDNS has had a few security bugs over the years (but not that many), but I’m maintaining a fork of DjbDNS with all of the security bugs I know about fixed:

https://github.com/samboy/ndjbdns

I am saying all this as someone who has had significant enough issues with DJB’s software, I ended up writing my own DNS server so I didn’t have to use his server (I might not had done so if DjbDNS was public domain in 2001, but oh well).

(As a matter of etiquette, it’s a little rude to claim someone is saying something “dubious”, especially when the claim is backed up with solid evidence [multiple audits didn’t find anything of significance in the last year, as I documented above], unless you have solid evidence the claim is dubious, e.g. a significant security hole more recent than three years old)

[3ASAF]

People here don't know that MaraDNS was already popular on extremely critical security mailing lists that basically hated anything but qmail and postfix. If you introduce more bugs and blog about them, it will probably gain in popularity. :)

[fc417fc802]

> It’s not normal for software to be so poorly written, one doubts the claim that a security bug hasn’t been found in over three years.

Can you back that claim up with at least some sort of theory? Because it doesn't match my perception of the real world, nor does it match my mental model of how CVEs happen.

[strenholme]

Yes, I can.

https://samboy.github.io/MaraDNS/webpage/DNS.security.compar...

Also, my sister post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48112042

[fc417fc802]

Is that not begging the question? You have asserted X and now you point to a particular track record to back the claim of X up but the track record only serves as valid evidence of X if we already accept your assertion that X is the case.

[zamadatix]

I never used Qmail, so I won't comment on it, but I will say I absolutely consider djbdns narrow in scope as well (before accounting the Unix approach, utilized perhaps even more than in MaraDNS, to break that already narrowed scope down into even more focused binaries).

I had believed (and continue to hold) DNS software containing, e.g., an authoritative DNS server which lacks native TCP or DNSSEC support falls squarely into the "narrowly scoped" bucket and would appreciate if you'd not try to decide my opinion for me on any given project in the future.

[strenholme]

The point of djbdns and qmail was this: It allowed administrators to run a local DNS server securely without needing to constantly patch the code. They were limited in scope, but were perfect for admins who valued security over features.

In an era when DNS was otherwise a monoculture, djbdns was a welcome breath of fresh air.

https://lwn.net/2001/0208/

[zamadatix]

Agreed, and that was a good use case + timing (at least for me a ways back :D). I.e. djbdns being narrow in scope isn't necessarily supposed to be a bad decision, it just doesn't serve as a counterexample to the narrow scope option as it was introduced to be.