ISC releases libbind-6.0 as separate software download, March 2009

Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) released libbind-6.0 as
a separate software download containing the standard resolver library,
along with header files and documentation used by software developers.

"BIND 8 is dead, as a name server and utility suite, but there
remains an active community of developers who depend on BIND 8
middleware and libraries," said Paul Vixie, ISC president and former
BIND maintainer. "For many years ISC shipped BIND 8's libraries as
part of BIND 9, but due to popular demand we are now making it
available as a separate package called libbind."

"We encourage anyone with a private copy of these libraries to
investigate this modern release and consider merging back into the
mainstream," Vixie said. "ISC is willing to review code and bugfix
submissions, and to accept bug fixes, for libbind. This includes
the old BSD gethostbyname() API."

ISC libbind provides functions and documentation for communicating
with domain name servers, retrieving network host entries from
/etc/hosts or via DNS, converting CIDR network addresses, performing
Hesiod information lookups, retrieving network entries from
/etc/networks, implementing TSIG transaction/request security of
DNS messages, performing name-to-address and address-to-name
translations, and utilizing /etc/resolv.conf for resolver configuration.

For further details, please visit here.