alt Hacker NewsThe point of djbdns and qmail was this: It allowed administrators to run a local DNS server securely without needing to constantly patch the code. They were limited in scope, but were perfect for admins who valued security over features.
In an era when DNS was otherwise a monoculture, djbdns was a welcome breath of fresh air.
Agreed, and that was a good use case + timing (at least for me a ways back :D). I.e. djbdns being narrow in scope isn't necessarily supposed to be a bad decision, it just doesn't serve as a counterexample to the narrow scope option as it was introduced to be.