Configuration Management (was: insight from the unixconfig project)

[Francois-Rene Rideau]

On Wed, Mar 13, 2002 at 12:09:46PM +1000, Sean Hogan wrote:
> Why is the LISP (or similar) machine not widely used??
Expensive proprietary software that runs on expensive proprietary hardware,
and that, though very convenient for power users (at the time) give little
bang per buck for end-users, with little end-user software.
In other words, the utmost in elitism.

> How come UNIX is??  And for very useful and important tasks too.
It's popular. Runs on cheap workstations (though not as cheap as DOS,
in the late 1980's -- guess why Windows "is" even more than UNIX).

> Where is the NOT-UNIX config management system (I want one)??
You need a NOT-UNIX system to begin with, for that.
However, the non-UNIX systems are not very developed.
Things like NativeOberon, ML/OS, or even FullPliant, etc.,
didn't spend much resources on config management (yet),
maybe because they're not fit to manage large networks,
maybe because they don't have enough end-user applications
to justify being installed on large networks,
maybe because they can't integrate legacy applications in their environment.

Conclusion: one target "killer" application for a non-UNIX system
could very well be UNIX config management, since it is precisely
the thing needed (together with a UNIX emulator) to integrate legacy
applications seamlessly into a new environment...

[ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ]
[  TUNES project for a Free Reflective Computing System  | http://tunes.org  ]
I once dreamt that children would be taught to not accept slogans on face
value, but to see through words and look for meaning or lack thereof. However,
I soon realized that by the time schools teach this piece of wisdom, it may
have itself become a slogan devoid of meaning, the sense of its words having
drifted or been otherwise corrupted by time and vice. You need more than dead
words to have people think by themselves; you need a living tradition.