Write down the naming contrast, because it argues the position
Splunk is from spelunking: caving, a lamp, feeling your way along in the dark. An honest description of search-driven investigation -- powerful with expertise, unforgiving without it. Cribl is from cribble, to sift, from Latin cribrum, a sieve; the same root gives engraving its maniere criblee, the dotted ground punched into a plate. Both senses land together: the data is a medium to be worked and thinned on the way through. A name about the material, not the destination. A cairn is a stack of stones on open ground, where the path is not obvious, doing one job -- somebody came this way, and this is the way. Three of its properties map onto things this project already does rather than things it claims. It is left by whoever went first for whoever comes next, which is the runbook culture and the reason every phase records what was actually run including the failures. Anyone passing adds to it, which is AGPLv3 throughout and an egress path that helps data leave. And you can see it from a distance in daylight, which is a legible query language, an AI that explains rather than divines, and a plan that publishes what has not been proven. Written into positioning.md rather than kept as a marketing note because it is a reason the position coheres, not decoration on top of it. Also noted there that it should not be turned into a slogan.
This commit is contained in:
@@ -243,6 +243,53 @@ everything and helps nobody. Archive depends on both. Fleet is last
|
|||||||
because it manages configuration the earlier phases define — building it
|
because it manages configuration the earlier phases define — building it
|
||||||
first would mean managing settings that do not exist yet.
|
first would mean managing settings that do not exist yet.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
## The names already argue the case
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Worth writing down because it is useful, not only because it is neat: the
|
||||||
|
three names describe three different relationships to not knowing where
|
||||||
|
you are.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
**Splunk** is from *spelunking* — the founders have always said so. Caving.
|
||||||
|
You go down into the dark with a lamp and feel your way along, and what
|
||||||
|
you find depends on how good you are at feeling around. That is an
|
||||||
|
honest description of search-driven investigation: powerful in expert
|
||||||
|
hands, and unforgiving if you do not already know roughly what you are
|
||||||
|
looking for. Every organisation that has watched its Splunk expertise
|
||||||
|
walk out of the door with one person knows the shape of that.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
**Cribl** is from *cribble* — to sift, from Latin *cribrum*, a sieve. The
|
||||||
|
same root gives engraving its *manière criblée*, the dotted ground
|
||||||
|
punched into a plate to make a texture. Both senses land in the same
|
||||||
|
place: the data is a medium to be worked, sifted, thinned and textured on
|
||||||
|
its way through. Which is exactly what the product is, and it is a name
|
||||||
|
about the *material*, not about where anyone is going.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
**A cairn** is a stack of stones on open ground. It exists where the path
|
||||||
|
is not obvious — above the treeline, across moorland, over bare rock —
|
||||||
|
and it does one job: tell you that someone came this way before, and that
|
||||||
|
this is the way. No cave, no lamp, no sifting. Daylight, an open trail,
|
||||||
|
and a marker.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Three properties of a cairn matter here, and each corresponds to
|
||||||
|
something this project actually does rather than something it merely
|
||||||
|
claims:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- **It is left by whoever went first, for whoever comes next.** That is
|
||||||
|
the runbook culture: every phase carries a document recording what was
|
||||||
|
actually run and what it found, including the parts that failed. The
|
||||||
|
value is not the stone, it is that somebody bothered.
|
||||||
|
- **Anyone passing can add to it.** A cairn grows by contribution and
|
||||||
|
belongs to nobody. AGPLv3 throughout, no commercial-license wall, and
|
||||||
|
an egress path that helps your data leave if you want it to.
|
||||||
|
- **You can see it from a distance, in daylight.** Nothing about it is a
|
||||||
|
dark hole you feel your way along. The query language is legible, the
|
||||||
|
AI explains rather than divines, and the plan — including what has not
|
||||||
|
been proven — is written down where anyone can read it.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The contrast is not a slogan and should not be turned into one. It is a
|
||||||
|
reason the positioning holds together: an open trail with markers on it is
|
||||||
|
a genuinely different proposition to a cave, and to a sieve.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
## What this does not change
|
## What this does not change
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The storage/query split in `/docs/architecture.md`, the licence, the
|
The storage/query split in `/docs/architecture.md`, the licence, the
|
||||||
|
|||||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user