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USENIX 2003 Report
BSD Forums writes "Dustin Puryear attended the USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC) this year in San Antonio, Texas and presents this report. USENIX offers attendees an interesting mix of papers and talks by academia, well-known industry professionals, and researchers working for companies across the world. What exactly did he really learn from this conference? He says research is as strong as ever within USENIX and open source communities. Samba is making significant progress with the ever emerging Active Directory networks. FreeBSD is emerging as one of the few key OSes of choice for web hosting. Finally, he says that Microsoft is competing for server business with their Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX products."
I guess no one cares.
Was this ever on the main page?
Only 7 replies -- including this one -- to a story on Slashdot! AMAZING!!
i have bad karma but i shower... how does that work...?
If i was you, you'd be me and we wouldn't be having this conversation
Usenix is fun, but let's be honest people. With restricted travel/conference resources, and the general/mid-level work and research presented the ATC, people would rather spend their money else where. Personally, I believe that it would have recieved more attention on both Slashdot, and in attendence if it were held on either coast (boston and bay area are safe bets, even if they get a little old).
..
Anyway, you get the idea... although it would have been cool to hear Neal Stephenson speak, and I'm sure the works presented were quality too... but like I said... south central texas
What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
Well, it seems like USENIX folks don't have to be afraid of getting Slashdotted...
It's getting harder and harder to get excited about confrences... since most of the companies won't send their admins. The only person I know here that gets to go to USENIX regularly only does so because it was part of his agreement of employment. Something I very much wish I had done. I can muster the $100 or so bucks to keep my USENIX/SAGE membership current, but $600+ for confrences? I requested to go to FAST, which is only like $750 and was turned down, PLUS it's in the Bay Area so I don't need to travel...... couldn't go. Requested the Veritas Users Confrence in Las Vegas, only like $1000. Rejected. Requested USENIX and LISA, again, turned down. I can't hardly get my company to comp my BOOKS! With the cost of these confrenses most people are unable or unwilling to spent that kind of money out of hand, and the few people I do know who go to the confs even if they have to pay out of pocket do so only because they find it a good way to stay attached to the community and have found employement that way. And gambling 2 months of rent (in the Silicon Valley) against the cost of USENIX in hopes of finding a job is a serious gamble. The only 2 confs I've gone to in the last 2 years was Sun Network, because our VAR got me free admission (as many people did), and LinuxWorld San Fransisco, but only for the Expo, which is increasinly filled with M$ reps and suits who look down their noses at geeks and open source programmers unless they wear a suit.
Hard times........ hopefully things get better soon. I can't even remember what it's like to get formal training.