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General admission at FreeBSD Con
softweyr writes "Pat Rietz at Walnut Creek CD-ROM has confirmed that there will be general admission (ie, free) at the FreeBSD Conference for the vendors booths." This is good to have confirmed, as some posters to an earlier story mentioned the cost as a definite disincentive to turning up. I'm looking forward to being able to put faces to very many names next week.
It will be cozy. There will be Walnut Creek, Whistle, and 2 or 3 others.
Is there a Linux booth at FreeBSD-con? If so, I'd like to hear what a staffer at the booth has to say, if NOT, then WHY?
My directory /usr/local/etc/rc.d is completely empty. And my /etc/rc.conf file contains just a few rather sparse entries, nothing at all like all the info needed to control starting and stopping of subsystems. I'll check the -arch archives. Unless I've totally missed the existence of a separate and completely different subsystem control mechanism, I'm more than a little fearful that *BSD may be staying clear of the perfectly acceptable System V and Linux solution for no good reason other than legacy politics. I sure hope that that's not the case.
So, what you're saying is that there is no mechanism actually available for subsystem stop/start control in *BSD.
Well, one can live with that for now, but it's clearly something that needs addressing.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
*sigh* Good news, if only I could get out there. Would it be too much to ask to hold one in Chicago or somewhere nearer the East Coast next year? :-)
don't know, but what I DO know is that it would be THE COOLEST if it is... I think that this is taking the whole consept of the "open community" a couple of steps further F1r57 p057
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Killroy Woz Here
Unfortunately I don't have that kind of money to dole out for flight to and back as well as conference costs.
Some of the programs look really interesting.
Barry Caplin, USWest
"Running an ISP on FreeBSD"
Fred Sanchez, Apple
"FreeBSD and the Darwin Project"
Jeff Chase, Duke University
"Gigabit networks with FreeBSD"
ARGH !
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Free admission, not free beer.
Shouldn't all open source conferences be free?
I know that it is very expensive to put on shows like this, but chargeing people to come get information about a free, open product seems kind of... unfair?
I know the money usually just goes toward expenses, but a free event may well attract users that aren't yet on our open source bandwagon.
Computers can only simulate determinism. ~Hermetic.
You just don't understand. These conferences cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) to produce, and come with severe liabilities.
Please go to a suitable hotel and scout this out on your own. Tell them you'd like a conference with about a thousand people. (Or even a few hundred.) Figure out how much it will cost to rent the meeting space. Then tell them you need a big area most of the time, but for BOFs/tutorials/working-groups, you'll need several smaller areas as well. And don't forget their supply you with coffee in the morning and pop in the afternoon. We're not even talking about a lunch or an evening reception.
Seriously, putting on meetings takes REAL MONEY. You are not going to get some philanthropist to waste a half million bucks just so people don't have to pay their own way.
A few other good sites, are Daemon news, for all sorts of info on the *BSDs, and FreeBSD Rocks for FreeBSD information, and FreeBSD Zine for more information, and finally, to buy your own cuddly daemon, FreeBSD Mall. George
It was nice to see both Linux and the free BSDs represented at the recent Linux Expo 99 at Olimpia in the UK. I picked up a FreeBSD PowerPak and loads of books and a cuddly penguin, followed by a great chicken-chilli ramen at Wagamama's. Great day out!
... yeow, it seems mighty regressive not to have it!]
It's nice to see that the occasional bickering witnessed here between the *BSD and Linux camps fortunately doesn't raise its head at conferences or expos, where everyone seems to realize that we're just different strains within one community and that there is only one real enemy, outside.
[I'm still trying to live within the limitations of not having an init.d directory in FreeBSD to allow easy stop/start of subsystems without rebooting
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Does the FreeBSD community have a site where they all hang out and discuss their ideas? Or is there a mailinglist with a web interface/archive?
It's all well and good to want to be a cheapskate, but someone has to pay for it. Regardless of whether price == 0, cost != 0. Who do you nominate? Name names!
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Infuriate left and right
I would like to know why so many posts are moderated as redundant or troll's.
I have only seen one post here that has been a troll.
Who ever is doing the Moderation got to hate BSD,
a stupid "Linux Rulez, I hate BSD"-monger.
Wouldn't it be nice if this was simulacast from a streaming video system? (ala NANOG)
Then you wouldn't HAVE to travel all the way to the left coast!
Is only the vendor area free? How many vendors will be there? What "loot" will be available?
This appears to be just free admission to the vendor booths, like the vast majority of conventions/industry shows I've seen (i.e. Seybold).
What makes free software possible is that software can be made freely available due to its nature. Having a convention, in a convention hall, with all of the costs that entails, would for the most part preclude having a free convention. I expect here that the exhibitors are picking up the tab, which is how it works usually with other big conventions. They realize they shouldn't charge to you walk around and be able to buy their products.
Now, of course, you could hold a really free convention if you could find someplace to hold it for free. Maybe a field someplace. And vendors and attendees could set up tents... and people could share food... BSDStock!
Unless you are local to the convention site, I suspect the free admission is not going to pack people in. There is still cost associated with getting to the convention. I doubt $10-$15 is going to make much of a difference either way. And if there is just free admission to the vendor area, it's not all that big a deal anyhow. The panels would be the things that would draw most people from further away.
did you see a guy walking round with a hairstyle like the FreeBSD demon?
That would have been me...btw, ya dont need a init.d dir, just read /etc/defaults/rc.conf, and /etc/rc to figure out the command/parameters to start subsystems, and put them in a script if need be :-)
--Brad
Cant be bothered to set up an account, hence anon/bastardYou can restart the system without rebooting. You can stop and start subsystems without rebooting. You just don't do it the SysV way. You can still kill, HUP and execute as needed.
I have used this SysVism on Linux and Irix. I _prefer_ the FreeBSD way of not isolating me from the guts of the system.
And please folks, don't say that *BSD won't use a SysVism purely out of spite. There is more than one way to skin a cat(1) and there isn't necessarily "One True Way". Some people like to do things another way, self included.
Of course, if doing everything is just like the next guy is the way it should be, then we already have a company from Redmond willing to provide the software. We can forsake unixen all together.
Thank You,
Jason C. Wells
Kirk's giving his BSD history talk. Beer is mandatory.