Re: Introducing Guix "Features"!

[Carlo Zancanaro]

On Thu, Feb 01 2024, Felix Lechner via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU 
System distribution." wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 30 2023, Attila Lendvai wrote:
>> the use of 'service' to describe two rather different abstractions: a
>> component of an OS vs. a deamon process run by shepherd.
>
> Indeed, the use of 'service' in much of Guix appears to be a grand
> misnomer. It probably occurred because the meaning expanded over time.

We can actually point to a specific moment when the meaning was
expanded. It was done in Guix 0.9.0:
https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2015/gnu-guix-090-released/

Here is a blog post introducing services back in 2015, which has a
heading "Services Beyond Daemons" which discusses the change to broaden
the term to encompass what Guix now calls a service:
https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2015/service-composition-in-guixsd/

There is also a talk that Ludovic gave at FOSDEM 2017 where he discusses
the ideas of Guix services (I can't remember the content of this, but it
seemed like it might be relevant):
https://archive.fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/composingsystemservicesinguixsd/

This doesn't seem like accidental concept creep. This was an intentional
decision to use the word "service" to mean something specific.

I say this to note that any argument to change the term should first
understand why this decision was made (see: Chesterton's Fence).

Carlo