Systemd founder and lead developer Lennart Poettering announced the creation of a new company called Amutable. The Amutable company being led by Chris Kühl (CEO), Christian Brauner (CTO) and Lennart Poettering (Chief Engineer) will be focused on delivering determinism and verifiable integrity to Linux systems.
The irony of Lennart “let’s change everything about Linux because I know better” Poettering creating a company called Amutable is not lost on me.
But also, that tracks because now it’s “I know better so now you can’t change anything” which is pretty on brand.
Systemd haters always freeze up when you point out the fact that Poettering did, in fact, know better and that systemd has been incredibly successful and beneficial for the ecosystem.
@entwine @IcedRaktajino Haters know there are loads of other good ways to orchestrate an operating system. E.g. #shepherd
His stuff has been an improvement though
Don’t wanna interrupt your rant, but “determinism and verifiable integrity” doesn’t sound like it’d impede changes.
Determinism/reproducible builds allow independent verification that a source corresponds to the binaries some repo ships. You can set up most languages, build systems, and environment to be reproducible, and once done it doesn’t have any additional effects, except maybe when changing build procedures you have to maintain the reproduceability.
“verifiable integrity” to me sounds like computer proof systems. Showing an algorithm/code/program corresponds exactly to some written spec, mathematically.
The project seems to be positioned explicitly against points of authority and “security” through compliance checks and certifications.
It’s a good fit in the infosec space in the age of sloppiness.
I think they’re referring to the name of the company being very similar to “immutable”, no?
In this context it’d mean something like “the actions of the binary are immutably liked to the spec”