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The Internet runs on free and open source software and so does the DNS

267 points by ChrisArchitect

by hliyan

8 subcomments

It's interesting that there is a generation of developers now who seem to believe that the Internet is an achievement of pure commercial, market dynamics and are surprised to learn about ARPANET and its early development within academia (we were taught this history in the first year of university). If the foundations of the Internet (particularly the protocol suites) had not been open, government-funded and not-for-profit, we would probably have a number of competing closed platforms instead of a single Internet, with paid services to perform protocol translations between them.

by neom

1 subcomments

And don't forget about this awesome report, Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure - by Nadia Asparouhova. https://www.fordfoundation.org/learning/library/research-rep... - great research into what goes into OSS.

by mumber_typhoon

3 subcomments

Imagine a scenario where you want to start gardening. Go to gardening clubs and you'll find a lot of free information there and people to guide you. Public libraries exist if you want to join a book club and start reading. Again free. Agriculture, irrigation, building homes, woodworking, stitching clothes, etc. everything essential has been free to learn and do.
Apply this to the internet and essentials are FOSS. Linux, DNS and maybe RISCV someday will mean you can build computers and internet on essentials that are free to learn and use.

by LeonM

2 subcomments

For what I remember, most of the DNS root servers used to run Bind9 exclusively. I'm glad to see that this is now more diverse with NSD and Knot also being used (see table 4 in the report).
Nothing against Bind9, but it is almost exclusively maintained by the ISC, so the DNS's future used to depend heavily on the ISC getting the funding needed to continue operating.

by whitehexagon

0 subcomment

I was wondering what it would take to fork the internet. Or more seriously, what it would take to create an open source / hardware alternative. Maybe something true to it's routes of academia, ie no commercial activity permitted, especially adverts! Maybe even limited to some of the original simple protocols like HTTP, FTP and maybe RSS?
When I was in Holland many years ago there was a university initiative to connect the whole town with it's own hobby network. I bought some directed antennae to connect, and it worked, but I seem to recall it was line-of-sight WiFi stuff and thus very limited range.
I also worked for an airline that had line-of-sight laser communications, but again it was only short distances.
Are there any modern alternatives that would make such a people sponsored/focused hobby network possible?
The first thought I had was long-wave radio, but I cant imagine there is much bandwidth there, but might be okay for a text only protocols?

by evertedsphere

0 subcomment

Perhaps it doesn't even matter anymore, but I'm not yet past the point where it's disheartening every time I click on a link and it's clear that it came out of an LLM. Hopefully this doesn't extend to the actual report.

by charcircuit

1 subcomments

>In the cloud, hyperscale computing platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services all operate significant resolver infrastructure to support their services. At least four of the biggest hyperscalers rely on FOSS for DNS resolving, while others have built proprietary solutions based on FOSS DNS libraries.
This is surprising. I would have expected them to have custom needs with so many customers that using an off the shelf service would be sufficient.

by seydor

3 subcomments

0 subcomment

by jongjong

4 subcomments

But the infrastructure is highly centralized and only certain chosen entities can operate gTLDs and certificate authorities. It's extremely misleading to call it 'free software'. Why can't there be multiple competing systems. There should be a push for Blockchain-based alternatives. I still don't understand why projects like Unstoppable Domains aren't getting more traction. The idea of a domain name that you actually own is appealing.