Definition: Promise
-------------------

A promise is a statement of intention.

Trust is an economic time-saver. If you can't trust you
have to verify, and that is expensive.

To improve trust we make promises. A promise is the documentation of an
intention to act or behave in some manner. This is what we need to learn to
trust systems.

CFEngine works on a simple notion of promises. Everything in CFEngine can be
thought of as a promise to be kept by different resources in the system.

CFEngine manages every intended system outcome as "promises" to be kept.

Promises are always things that can be kept and repaired
continuously, on a real time basis, not just once at install-time. 

Combining promises with patterns to describe where and when
promises should apply is what CFEngine is all about.

