It's not so clear as it seems. RFC952 was written for plain old HOSTS.TXT method of network names resolution.
Since then DNS appeared and RFC952 was appended and relaxed by other RFCs such as: - RFC2181 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2181), section 11 says: "The DNS itself places only one restriction on the particular labels that can be used to identify resource records. That one restriction relates to the length of the label and the full name. The length of any one label is limited to between 1 and 63 octets. A full domain name is limited to 255 octets (including the separators). ... Those restrictions aside, any binary string whatever can be used as the label of any resource record." - RFC1123 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1123), section 2.1 says: "The syntax of a legal Internet host name was specified in RFC-952 [DNS:4]. One aspect of host name syntax is hereby changed: the restriction on the first character is relaxed to allow either a letter or a digit. Host software MUST support this more liberal syntax." Not telling anything about a "minus" though. - RFC1035 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1035), section 2.3.1 says: "When creating a new host name, the old rules for HOSTS.TXT should be followed. This avoids problems when old software is converted to use domain names." Please note that there is word "should" not "must". And the main reason to follow those rules stated is capability with _old_ software. Given that RFC952 is more than 25 years old and there ARE client software that is capable of handling not-rfc952-compliant domain names, some companies just USE those domain names. There are no reasons for them to NOT using it, because RFC1035 doesn't strict domain names to be RFC952 compliant. Let's go away from all those RFCs for a minute. What we have in real world? We have some real domain names with probably valuable information we can't visit from Ubuntu, and you say everything is okay? > If we have rules, we have to follow it, we are professional. If we have favorite sites, we want to visit it, we are users. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668926 Title: can't resolve domain names starting with a dash (minus sign) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/668926/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
