Talk:Configuration Menu Language

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¿What exactly happened that this apparently much superior configuration system has not been adopted ? This is the closest explanation I have been able to find from an interview of Eric S. Raymond by Robert Mcmillan (http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-ivesr.html?ca=dgr-lnxw09EricRaymond) <Interview Quote> dW: What happened with the CML2 kernel configurator?

Raymond: It was horrible. It was the best work of my life, and it was mugged by kernel list politics.

dW: It sounds like that was a pretty ambitious project.

Raymond: It was, I mean I built an intelligent configurator -- basically a baby rule-based expert system -- for configuring Linux kernels, and I did it all in less than 8,000 lines of Python. It was a system that literally made it impossible to get an invalid kernel configuration because it would do intelligent deduction from constraints. And I had the full approval of the kernel config group, I had Linus's imprimatur that this was going to go into 2.5, and it all fell apart politically. It was horrible.

dW: But you're the guy who taught the world that in the open source community the best code wins.

Raymond: And it didn't this time. And that was horribly disappointing to me.

dW: Why didn't it?

Raymond: Because Linus abdicated his leadership role, broke his promises, and there are dinosaurs on the kernel list. It's a very conservative, hostile culture.

dW: So if there was another chapter for Cathedral and the Bazaar that you would write based on what you learned there, what was the lesson?

Raymond: That it is possible for open source cultures in some respects to ossify enough that good work is locked out. And that is a long-term problem that I don't know how we're going to deal with.

I also think part of the reason that it happened was that there are people on the kernel list who are really hostile to the idea of making kernel configuration accessible to everybody. They want it to continue being a black art. </Interview Quote> The article should expand on the basic role a kernel configuration menu language, perhaps move on to comparing CML vis-a-vis CML2.