ConFigures

Sustainable Development and Software

I’ve used the tag “sustainability” (on Connotea) for close on to two years to organize and track articles about ecology,  esources, and other matters concerning living on the earth in the future.  A few days ago, without thinking about that, the phrase “sustainable development” popped into my head during a discussion of the future of OLPC.  I like my use of that phrase, the more I think about it, as I think it may provide some context for why I care about configuration management, knowledge management, and process and standards in general.  Doing config management for a number of years at a number of places, software maintenance is something I’ve dealt with a lot.  Practices may be tailored somewhat to the scale and needs of a project or an organization, but it can be difficult to maintain a product or an effort if recreatability, repeatability, and tracking the reasons for decisions/changes are mostly afterthoughts.

As with ”knowledge gardening”, a web search reveals that others have used the phrase “sustainable development” (in the context I mean in this entry) before me.   In fact, Kevin Tate wrote what looks like a pretty good book about about it; here’s an excerpt.