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BSDCon 2000: Oct. 14-20
This is the second annual BSD Conference, after the success of the last one at Berkeley Marina. All BSD users are welcome, and encouraged to attend.
This year highlights will include:
- BSD Internals tutorial, by Kirk McKusick
- Conference dinner at the Monterey Aquarium
- Talks by BSD users, and members of the commercial community
It's all happening at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, and runs from Oct. 14 to Oct. 20. The first tutorial is on the 14-15th, Kirk's internals tutorial covers the 16-17th, and the rest of the conference is from the 18th to the 20th.
Naturally, these things cost money. It's $495 to attend the conference itself, and another $495 to attend a tutorial. (There are two tutorial sessions, one is on 14-15, the other is on 16-17. The second one is Kirk's BSD internals tutorial, the first one is TBA. Room rates at the Hyatt are $129 a night.
If you're a BSD user or developer and would like to present a paper at the conference then get writing. Contact Jim Mock with your ideas, or for more information about the topics they are looking for.
Why did they have to schedule it in October? We already have the Atlanta Linux Showcase scheduled for October 10-14. IMO ALS is the last great technical Linux conference left. I would guess the BSD one would also me a great technical conference also, which makes it such a shame that they both need to be one right after another.
Does no one do any research before scheduling these conferences?
i think the conference lasts six days. We're not talking about renting a small room in the back of an obscure hotel but probably a nice and expensive hotel with good facilities. Then you also need lots of people to organize this and they're probably not all volunteers. Most likely the conference fee does not cover everything. That would explain the sponsoring link on their page. I have attended some scientific conferences. Generally those are organized by none profit organizations. The prices are comparable.
Having a well organized conference makes it possible to invite important people (which usually is essential for delivering a good conference). Keeping the price high also prevents that there will be masses of newby hackers rather than really interested people.
Jilles
Exactly how much do you think it costs to rent a place for holding the conference and organize a conference? We're probably talking about a meeting of a few hundred people, so trust me nobody is getting rich here.
:) somebody has to pay for the free beer!
Jilles
The only people who are going to these things tend to be the ones who are already convinced that they are A Good Thing (tm). This is to say, you're not going to see a whole lot of Microsoft people at this one.
While that might sound like a good thing, it's not doing a lot for spreading alternative ideas. The Linux people go to Linux cons, the BSD people go to BSD cons, etc.
But then again, I suppose it's always been that way....
Got Rhinos?
No, there isn't. But people may want an alternative, even if they don't need one. By your logic, Coke and PepsiCo should combine forces to make the ultimate soft drink, and Ford and GM should join to work on perfecting the motor vehicle. Diversity is good. If people want to develop BSD, who are you to tell them they'd be better off putting their efforts into Linux? From a purely commercial point of view, if there was a single company controlling the direction of both BSD and Linux, it would make sense to merge the two. Thankfully, real life isn't like that.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Imagine that Windows was open-sourced. Would you move to Windows? No. You'd stick with Linux, because you believe that the design is enough better that there's no hope of *ever* getting Windows up to the code quality of Linux.
Now, I'm not saying Linux is anywhere near as bad as Windows, or even necessarily "bad" in any absolute sense, but I'd much rather work on BSD systems than on Linux, and no, I *can't* just "change Linux" to make it meet my needs.
You can't just mash philosophies together. SVR4 is a total disaster because it can't decide whether it's SysV or BSD. So, I can't take the Linux kernel design, add the design ideas I want, and expect to get a meaningful result.
You can't "merge" everything. Some things are sufficiently different that the best you can hope for is coexistance and compatability.
Yes, there's still a need for BSD. From a technical standpoint, there's probably still a need for more than one, just as there's a need for all the little branches and offshoots of Linux that crop up from time to time.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I used SVR4 systems of various sorts, including Solaris 7, for ages. It was a horrifically split system. Just try using the Berkeley side of an SVR4 box, and watch in horror. Oh, they've probably fixed the most obvious stuff, like "stat" giving corrupted data if you link with the ucb C library, but it's still nightmarish.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
According to the conference's website:
The cost of the conference is $495. If you register before September 1, 2000, you qualify for the early-bird discount of $50 off.
Still, $495 is not expensive for a high-tech conference of any sort. If you look at some of the seminars and developer conferences held by Seimens, Microsoft, Oracle or any other companies, the BSDCon is pretty inexpensive. It is pretty expensive to hold a 3-4 day conference in California for hundreds of people. Conferences aren't really BSDi's main source of income (it's the CD's and BSDI's products/services).