Towards a POSIX Standard for Software Administration

The POSIX draft standard for Software Administration is about to go to ballot for acceptance as a formal POSIX standard. Since this standard is likely to form the basis of future Software Administration products it will have a profound effect on the facilities available to administrators and the way they manage software. This paper explains how the standard came about, gives a summary of the features and explains how systems administrations can, via the balloting process, have an influence on the final standard.