[121] in Hesiod
Re: Is Hesiod dead?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Manavendra Thakur)
Mon Jan 11 12:41:08 1993
From: Manavendra_Thakur@NeXT.COM (Manavendra Thakur)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 17:36:12 GMT
To: Ronald G. Minnich <rminnich@metropolis.super.org>
Cc: Mark Rosenstein <mar@MIT.EDU>, hesiod@Athena.MIT.EDU
> i am surprised it did not catch on. What do people use if they don't
> use hesiod? nis? horrors.
> ron
Well, on NeXT machines, there is a package called NetInfo available.
It is (speaking as a biased observer who has used both systems!) more
powerful and flexible than NIS, but on the down side it is easier to
screw up with NetInfo than it is with NIS. NetInfo has been made
available as a separate commercial source code product by NeXT, and
third parties have ported the software to sparcs, Auspex, DG, and maybe
a few other platforms.
I think the reason Hesiod never really caught on was that you needed
source to most of your programs to port them to use Hesiod. Most sites
don't have the resources to provide Athena quality service (i.e. where
you put out regular releases, do advanced software engineering, etc).
In addition, there are reasonable questions to ask about the future of
Hesiod - will it ever run on top of X.500, for example, and would
anyone need Hesiod if and when X.500 takes off? Not that these
questions don't have answers -- I'm sure they do -- but without an
active force enhancing and improving Hesiod on a day-to-day basis, one
wonders how much of a future Hesiod really has.
MIT and Athena can no longer afford to push the envelope in large
system installation and management software the way they did in the
1980s, and so far at least no one has stepped forward to pick up the
ball.
Manavendra Thakur
(speaking for myself and as a former Athena user, and not on the behalf
of my employer!)
