Mailing the story:

Ubuntu has an interesting project called Upstart, which is a replacement for the traditional Unix init system. The goals of Upstart are ambitious: to modernize and streamline the boot process, control user tasks, and manage services. Currently these things are managed with a multitude of different utilities: cron, atd, anacron, init, telinit, udev, acpid, apmd, ifupdown, module-init-tools, inetd, xinetd, update-rc.d, etc.init.d, /etc/rc*d, and gosh knows what-all. So Upstart intends to replace sysvinit and initscripts, and to replace all the service and task managers- cron, atd, inetd, and so forth- with a single daemon. To make it even more fun, they are preserving backwards-compatibility for a period of time to make the transition easier for users. If you're running *buntu Edgy, you're already seeing Upstart in action.