This short form is "for historical reasons". That's not "they're too lazy to fix it" reasons, rather there is a very large amount of hardware deployed elsewhere which you might have to interact with making assumptions. You have to fit within the lowest common denominator of all those assumptions.
> If your tools cannot handle unlimited length names, use different tools.
Because that's not possible. According to the RFC[1], FQDNs are are limited to 255 characters. Individual components (i.e. between the dots) are limited to 64 characters. Having to account
for e.g. IDN, means space limits are an active concern.
This short form is "for historical reasons". That's not "they're too lazy to fix it" reasons, rather there is a very large amount of hardware deployed elsewhere which you might have to interact with making assumptions. You have to fit within the lowest common denominator of all those assumptions.
> If your tools cannot handle unlimited length names, use different tools.
Because that's not possible. According to the RFC[1], FQDNs are are limited to 255 characters. Individual components (i.e. between the dots) are limited to 64 characters. Having to account for e.g. IDN, means space limits are an active concern.
[1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1035.txt