The author of the DNS server Trust-dns has announced the renaming of the project to hickory dns. The reason behind the name change is to make the project more appealing to users, developers, and sponsors, and to avoid confusion with the concept of “Trusted DNS”. Additionally, registering a trademark and protecting the brand are important considerations, as the name Trust-DNS may not be suitable as a unique commodity sign. The project aims to evolve from an experimental project focused on creating components in a memory-safe programming language to becoming a fully functional product.
The development of the Hickry DNS server will be overseen by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), which is known for founding the Let’s Encrypt project and contributing to the development of Internet security technologies. Under the ISRG’s guidance, several projects, including the implementation of SUDO, TLS module for Apache HTTP server, NTP server, and AV1 decoder, have been successfully developed. The transfer of the renamed project to the hickorydns organization repository on GitHub will make it easier for developers and the community to participate and contribute.
With the renaming, the Trust-DNS-ReSolver and Trust-DNS-PROTO CRETE packages will be renamed to Hickry-ReSolver and Hickry-Proto, respectively. The primary server will be packaged as Hickry-DNS. The Trust-DNS-ReSolver and Trust-DNS-PROTO packages currently have millions of downloads on Crates.io, and it is anticipated that with the support of ISRG, the usage of the DNS server will expand, making it more accessible for developers.
Hickory DNS encompasses various components, including an authoritative DNS server, DNS client, local resolver, and recursive DNS server. The project also includes libraries with implementations of low-level protocols. It supports DNSSEC, DNS over TLS (DoT), DNS over HTTPS (DoH), DNS over QUIC (DoQ), multicast DNS (mDNS), service discovery (DNS-SD), dynamic renewal of records, child-to-party synchronization (CSYNC), DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE), DnSkey, and Certification Authority Authorization (CAA).