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Network Problems For years Craig has been talking about the hand-in-hand relationship between network security and dirctory services, and the essential role both play together in building network infrastructure. But it's such abstract stuff, and so far from being implemented in any coherent way in the Internet, that most of us don't pay much attention to it. Now maybe Network Solutions has finally given us a good reason. As most of us know, Network Solutions holds the domain registration database for the Internet. It is also owned by VeriSign, which calls itself "the leading provider of trusted infrastructure services." Now we're learning that Network Solutions has been marketing that information to marketers — the people we least trust to give a shit about anybody's privacy. If you're looking for a world-size security hole in the Internet's directory system, check out the company's sales pitch to marketers on its own marketing site, Dotcom.com: Ready to win the Internet marketing game? Take your marketing program to the next level with Data Services from Verisign/Network Solutions. No other source offers the reachand depth of data when targeting companies who are doing business on the Internet. As my hand-wringing over the Alchin matter demonstrated over the past few days, I'm trying to make clear the need for all of us to understand that there are some things with software that only commercial companies can do, some things that only the free and open source software communties can do, and one thing that only both can do together — and that's build internet infrastructure. This problem will only be solved by both sides talking and working together. We can't expect business alone to do the job. Network Solutions is livid proof of that fact. So is Microsoft (in spite of doing some very clueful things for customers and markets). We also shouldn't expect the hacker community to do the same, all by itself. They provide a necessary but insufficient part of the solution. Without a commercial context — without busienss motivated to build on this infrastructure — too much just won't happen. This wouldn't be a bad time to bring back an interview I did with Craig last summer. Especially since it addresses the single thing that keeps us from talking to each other about this stuff: the tendency to collapse all kinds of other distinctions into moral ones. I was about to do that myself when I started writing this. The first thing I wrote was "Network Solutions is evil." I still believe that, by the way. But starting there doesn't help. It does help to start by embarrasing the shit out of Network Solutions, though. They need to know that getting suppying spammers with information they hold in trust is not consistent with their survival as a company. Okay, one more Here's Dylan Tweney on the P2P event. I notice he refers to " the entertaining neo-hip babblings of the Cluetrain Manifesto." Babblings, huh? Wonder what made him change his tune? Copy editing, blog style Craig just sent me an email correcting my misspelling of Jim Alchin's surname. Just one L. I'll correct past blogs later. Gotta crash. Now we're talking Great blog on the Alchin matter from Joshua, who works at Microsoft. He has some very useful questions that I hope I can find time to answer soon. Right now I'm going to bed at 2:12AM, and I start a heavy travel schedule tomorrow: Sacramento (actually the Delta), then Orlando for most of next week. I will respond, just not at the usual pace. A Deja View On Valentine's Day I joked that Deja.com had "failed over" to Google. The next day I got an email from a "Deja Refugee" that painted a sobering picture. With the author's permission, I turned the raw text into a Web page right here. A sampler: Google's actions display arrogance and contemptuous disregard for (or shocking ignorance of) the needs and wishes of the computing community. I speculate that their corporate discussions anticipated this kind of reaction from that community, quickly followed by a conscious and purely marketing decision to smooth it over with saccharine platitudes. (Speaking of which, Google's press release is here.) The letter ends with a gauntlet: Since Google claims that Deja's interface is of no use to them, I challenge Google to provide Deja's code and oldest archives to the open-source community, and I urge others to echo that challenge. This is a test of Google's mettle. If the Deja code indeed has no value to Google, they should turn the code loose. Put it on SouceForge or something. It's the right thing to do.
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