Re: 16 year old bug

["Perry E. Metzger" <perry%piermont.com@localhost>]

On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:46:16 -0400 (EDT) der Mouse
<mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost> wrote:
> The reason was exactly this: growing the space without renumbering
> when the original space's pair had alreayd been allocated
> elsewhere.  Was it necessary?  Not for most values of "necessary".
> Was it useful? Definitely.

Was it, for practical purposes, unsupportable? Was it something
likely to cause subtle bugs all over the networking stack? Was it
something obsoleted more or less 20 years ago? All yes.

I would say that the robustness of the networking code is more
important than a rare use that provides slight convenience.

> Of course, NetBSD may, if it wishes, desupport them.  It also may,
> if it wishes, desupport netmask boundaries falling other than on
> octet boundaries.  I would call the one a bug just as I would the
> other.

That is your privilege. I believe, however, that you are alone in
this opinion.

-- 
Perry E. Metzger                perry%piermont.com@localhost