On 12/12/2011 4:02 PM, Karsten Bräckelmann wrote:
On Mon, 2011-12-12 at 15:42 -0800, jdow wrote:
Hm, their limit is 100,000 queries. LKML can probably account for about
that many queries per month for one user. Add in Fedora and spam and I am
pretty sure two users could overrun their limits.
100,000 queries per *day*, not month.
Plus, using a *caching* DNS server, no matter how much mail the LKML
list-server emits a day, it's just a few queries to the DNSWL mirrors.
And guess what, the second subscriber does not add any additional
queries.
*sigh*
Most likely 90% of the ISPs and corporations out there who wanted
to use the DNSWL and did this would experience no problems.
But the text on the website is extremely hand-wavy.
They state you must purchase a subscription if your selling anti-spam
services. This is pretty unambiguous.
They also state if you do more than 100,000 queries per day on the
public nameservers you must purchase a subscription, this is also
pretty unambiguous.
But what is ambiguous is that they state that non-commercial use is OK,
but they don't state that commercial use must require a subscription,
and they don't define commercial or non-commercial use.
So if I run a profit making ISP that offers spam-filtering as a free
ad-on, I am not selling anti-spam services - or am it? Since the
free add-on is a value-add, even though I may say it's free in the
marketing, in truth I really am selling anti-spam services.
And if I'm a commercial company with 200 employees and I run my own
caching nameserver then what? I'm not non-commercial so my use isn't
non-commercial.
The TOS is basically structured so that the maintainers can pick
and choose what users need to be designated as "need to get money from"
and what users don't.
And the more explicit TOS here:
http://www.dnswl.org/license
is no less ambiguous. It defines "users" then talks about commercial
vendors of dnswl data - but "commercial vendors of dnswl data" isn't
defined precisely and the implication overlaps the more precise
definition of user.
Now yeah I've been around and I get what they are driving at, I
think most people reading do.
But our "I get what they are driving at" has absolutely no legal weight
and this is my problem with the DNSWL, it's why I don't use it.
"feeping creaturism" comes to mind here. They suck you in for free
and once your dependent on them they yank the rug out and change
terms then want money. I hate when companies do that. I have
a whole library of software programs that are versions released just
prior to the commercial version. (and of course exist on no archive
site today) and now the service providers are playing that game.
When Unisys started charging for the GIF patent it triggered the
abandonment of GIF and replacement by PNG and just about the time that
this was completed the GIF patent expired, making PNG pointless
except as a statement by the community along the lines of
"what you did is so unforgivable we are going to spend thousands of
hours making sure your patent is gonna be screwed"
But it's OK for list providers to play this game, eh? Just not Unisys?
Ted
