Frequently Asked Questions

What is Etcha?

Etcha is a command line tool for building and running systems using declarative configurations. Etcha lets you build images like containers, and run them using tools like Terraform.

What's the benefit of building with Etcha?

Etcha builds and signs the images it creates, allowing system builders to create build pipelines to distribute trusted images. Images can have expiration dates, enforcing new images to be used. Etcha helps solve the "secret zero" problem by creating JWTs that can be used as an authentication method for tools like HashiCorp Vault.

What's the benefit of running my systems with Etcha?

Traditional configuration management isn't stateful like Terraform. Etcha is, it remembers what it has done to a machine and can "clean up" unused resources. Additionally, the configurations for Etcha are signed and encrypted, and they can be served from custom URLs, allowing you to scale and distribute your configurations however you want.

What is EtchaOS?

Etcha can build operating systems from scratch, allowing for clean room builds and derivatives. EtchaOS is a reference implementation of this--an opinionated, semi-mutable operating system based on Fedora that uses Etcha to build images and runtime configurations.

Is Etcha Open Source Software (OSS)?

Not at this time. See Open Source at Candid Development for more details.

How will Etcha and EtchaOS be licensed?

Once released, Etcha and EtchaOS will be free for personal and non-production use. For production use, a yearly subscription will be required to use Etcha. EtchaOS will have yearly and pay as you go subscriptions available.

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