Forgive me for derailing the conversation, but I've been following this thread about the Cathedral & The Bazzar: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4407188

In particular, I've found the discussion of autoconf to be fascinating. I think what fundamentally bothers me about Vagrant is that it feels like autoconf. By that, I mean it's a system which 1) hides a ton of hard work that users don't need to do to target multiple backends 2) accomplishes that hiding through complexity 3) further hides that complexity through an "easy" interface 4) generally just fucking works most of the time 5) is completely maddening to deal with when it does break 6) ideally shouldn't need to exist.

Anyway, I realize that ideals != reality. I also realize that I've got a learned behavior of reinventing the minimal viable tool from fundamentals to avoid dealing with the complexity of problems that I don't have. And furthermore, I realize that my learned behavior is of limited applicability outside of narrow environments, such as my own startup where I own the full stack and make all the rules.

I have seen this before, and very much enjoy reading it again.

One nit is paint company Mark Williams. is not true. Mark Williams Company was first Mark Williams Chemical company, marketing a drink called Dr. Enuf (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Enuf)

EDIT: There is some very lively discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4407188, some fraction of which is a flame war, but includes some responses from phk himself.

(pre-1990 myself. By an embarrasing margin)