[27484] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Alternatives (was Re: whois broke again?)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dana Hudes)
Mon Feb 21 08:43:12 2000
Message-ID: <001101bf7c6f$5213b2e0$3d5cdcd1@hudes.org>
From: "Dana Hudes" <dhudes@panix.com>
To: "William Allen Simpson" <wsimpson@greendragon.com>,
<nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 08:26:53 -0500
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Just want to point out that while apparently the Perl module I maintain, =
Net::Whois doesn't work with the new long domain names it does work for =
everything in the NSI database. It does not support the competing =
registrars because they have wildly different format.
There is a WHOIS working group but it isn't very active :-(
Dana
----- Original Message -----=20
From: "William Allen Simpson" <wsimpson@greendragon.com>
To: <nanog@merit.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 21, 2000 2:38 AM
Subject: Alternatives (was Re: whois broke again?)
>=20
> "Roeland M.J. Meyer" wrote:
> > For the record, I've tried to get you guy's attention with this =
stuff over
> > two years ago. Y'all strongly told me it was non-operational. But, =
when
> > systems start failing, and it becomes an operational issue, it's way =
too
> > late.
> >=20
> Well, I was listening; we just didn't have rough consensus. But, =
maybe=20
> it's not _that_ late.
>=20
> Some private messages have said that NSI claims the whois contact=20
> information is now their "property".
>=20
> Here's an alternative: fight fire with fire.
>=20
> The collection of contact information interesting to network operators =
> would be separately copyrightable under the new "digital millenium" =
act. =20
> After all, we never use most of the relatively useless information=20
> maintained by NSI.
>=20
> Would it be OK with the rest of us for Rodney Joffe to create a=20
> database of all the requests and answers made thru geektools?
>=20
> Users could add reliability notes about whether the contacts are =
valid.
>=20
> The resulting "compilation" would be what we distribute to our =
mirrors.=20
>=20
> This requires that we all use geektools to seed the database. We =
would=20
> change the Open/Net/Free/*BSD/*nix whois distributions to point at=20
> geektools. (Especially as default whois is pretty useless right now.)
>=20
> And that we trust Rodney (or some more formal entity) to administer =
the=20
> copyright in a way that is pleasing to us.
>=20
> In our naming tradition, we could call this new database "OpenWhois" =
or=20
> "NetWhois" or even "FreeWhois". ;-)
>=20
> Any consensus?
>=20
> WSimpson@UMich.edu
> Key fingerprint =3D 17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26 DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C =
32
>=20
