BIND 10: The First Year

We have nearly reached the end of the first year of the BIND 10 project. To celebrate this, we are releasing the first version of BIND 10.

Authoritative-only DNS Server

Our major goal for the first year of the BIND 10 project was an authoritative-only DNS server, as well as establishing the architecture and framework necessary for building the remainder of the software. The features of this server are documented on the BIND 10 wiki:

http://bind10.isc.org/wiki/Year1Deliverable

The BIND 10 guide is available here:

http://bind10.isc.org/docs/bind10-guide.html http://bind10.isc.org/docs/bind10-guide.pdf

The source code is available on the ISC FTP server:

ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/bind10/

This release is not meant to replace BIND 9 yet, even for authoritative only servers! Our plan is to have a server ready for production environments, but that is still a couple of years away. The current version is meant for testing, experimenting, and so on. We'll be blogging more about the features and choices made for BIND 10 in the future. If there is something you are curious about, please feel free to comment on this article, or send an e-mail to the BIND 10 developers' list.

The BIND 10 Community

Speaking of the BIND 10 developers' list... In addition to the actual software, BIND 10's first year has been an experiment in a different style of working for ISC. We are trying to work in a more open way. The idea is to build a real community of users, who participate in all parts of BIND 10's creation and evolution, rather than simply asking for features and hoping they solve the real-world problems faced by DNS users. Two of the BIND 10 sponsors, JPRS and CNNIC, also have developers working on the project. This gives the project a wider perspective than if only ISC staff were involved. To try to build the BIND 10 community, we have been working using a Trac site, which has a Wiki and ticket system, which we use to document and manage work on the project. We have also opened the source code repository for public downloads. The BIND 10 developer mailing list is public, and we try to keep all detailed discussion in that forum. The jabber chat room used by BIND 10 developers is public. We minute our weekly team calls, and publish those on the Wiki. And of course, we have been blogging. Until now there has not been any actual software usable for those not actively working on the code, so we did not expect a large community. Now there is software, so hopefully the users will come!

BIND 10 Sponsors

BIND 10's first year was funded by a set of generous sponsors. The work would not have been possible without their help. Please join me in thanking them:

Patron Sponsors:

• CIRA
• JPRS

Sponsors:

• Afilias
• AFNIC
• CNNIC
• DENIC
• IIS.SE
• Nominet
• Registro.br
• SIDN
• CO.ZA Registry

Our goals for the second year are more ambitious, so we are looking for more sponsors. Please consider sponsoring BIND 10.

Year 2

For the second year, we will be implementing a recursive, validating DNS resolver for BIND 10. We will also be improving the authoritative server by adding additional types of data sources, optimizing performance, creating a new control language, and making it all-around better! Also in the second year, we will be changing the way we release code. Now that we have a server that can be run, our intention is to make a release every 4 to 6 weeks, with a defined number of improvements with each release. The idea is not to do away with our quality assurance, but to make it easier for users to see the progress of the software as we work on it.

Thanks!

For those of us who have been involved with the project for a while, this is a very cool milestone. My thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make this first release of BIND 10.