> All I've seen identd do so far is cause bogus servers to insist that
> machines which are not UNIX (tm) are not allowed to use them, even
> when those machines are perfectly capable of giving out useful data
> about who's who...

What servers are these?  The only example I know of is IRC, which even
if completely nonfunctional is hardly a crippling loss to most people.
Especially since even you admit that it's the ircd that's broken.

> Not very useful, IMHO, a protocol which (in practice) demands either
> lies or expensive proprietary software.

What does break if you use OTHER?  Anything besides IRC?

I'm also not sure you're correct that it requires either lies or
proprietary software.  Nothing in RFC1700 is precise about the
semantics of the various OS names; in particular, it is not at all
clear to me that UNIX is disallowed for OSes that are not authorized to
use the UNIX trademark; even if it is, UNIX-BSD cannot reasonably be
called an incorrect response for a NetBSD system.  (I don't know
whether it would pacify ircd, and I really don't care.)

In any case, if you-as-a-sysadmin think it's worthless, be my guest,
don't run it.  _I_ won't run a machine without it, even if I have to
install it myself.

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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