Re: PROPSAL: import Apple's mDNSResponder

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>> whois.iana.org says no .local TLD exists.  Given that, I think it is
>> a very bad idea
> relax.  there's an rfc for it.

Which one?  I did a quick grep for .local and the only one that looked
promising was 2965, but (a) this is not HTTP state management we're
talking about and (b) 2965 even includes an IESG note warning about the
possibility of its breaking if a .local TLD is ever created.  It's also
relatively old.

What did I miss?

> It's already happened, but it's reserved for mDNS, not for
> ``site-local'' use.

That strikes me as an almost worse idea, reserving .local for anything
other than local use.  The implication of the meaning of the word is
just too strong.

Especially...

> Some sites are using .local as a bogus TLD in normal bind-style DNS,
> and people all over the place are now advising each other to pick
> another bogus TLD for this purpose because the ``rough consensus'' in
> the rfc and the ``running code'' in Mac OS X, Ubuntu, Solaris have
> claimed .local for mDNS.

...using .local by default when turning mDNS on is reasonable.
Reserving .local for that use is not, especially since - like anything
else site-internal - it's unenforceable and undetectable from the
outside.

Not that anyone cares about sanity of domain name use any longer, ever
since .com stopped meaning "commercial", .net "network provider", etc.
Nobody except a few bitter curmudgeonly idealists like me.

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