Re: [cobalt-users] bigbrother

[Bruce Timberlake <Bruce.Timberlake@xxxxxxx>]

I missed the original couple of messages on this thread, so I'll comment
now (I went back through the archives and read the whole thread):

Back in the day, when Cobalt was small and getting started, we actually did
a custom version of the RaQ1 and RaQ2 OS for SimpleNet, an ISP in San Diego
(who was subsequently acquired by Broadcast.com, who was subsequently
acquired by Yahoo).

This methodology didn't work out for us logisitically - every time a patch
came out, we had to roll a special version for them.

SimpleNet/Yahoo! has long since moved to a "standard" Cobalt build on their
boxes (in fact, my first job at Cobalt was to help them do this).

Our codebase just never got scrubbed to remove their specific changes: what
this function actually did was to notify SimpleNet whenever a RaQ owner
made their own DNS entries, as SimpleNet provided all DNS services for
their customers. This allowed customers to use their own UI to set up DNS
records, which were then periodically mailed to an address at SimpleNet
that was parsed and entered into their master DNS records.

I'll send a note to the engineers to remove this routine from the CVS tree
so that future builds won't have it included.

If you look at a lot of our code, though (especially on the OSRCD), you'll
see we basically just keep adding code for new products; not much is ever
removed (your RaQ4 has chunks of Qube 2700 code in the Perl modules, etc).

--
Bruce Timberlake
Sun Cobalt Technology Engineer
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

E: bruce.timberlake@xxxxxxx
T: 877-718-3569 / x69369