Why is there no platform independent way of clearing a terminal?

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In message <mailman.1445.1280767895.1673.python-list at python.org>, David 
Robinow wrote:

>  As an admittedly stupid comparison, I have 1579 DLLs in my
> \windows\system32 directory.
> Some number of these have been upgraded by Windows Update.

What about the ones that aren’t? How do you maintain those?