From the Bounties page:
----------------------- System G-Conf (or other configuration) backend
Currently, NetworkManager relies on talking to the session GConf daemon for configuration. With some of these other interface types, a configuration store is needed that would be available even when no user session is initialized. -----------------------
I'd like to propose Elektra as this other system-wide configuration backend. GConf, in its essence, was not designed to be system wide. It actually has too much dependencies for that.
More info here: http://www.libelektra.org/ http://www.libelektra.org/GConf
Regards, Avi