[TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[Warren Toomey]

Hi all, I've just heard that the Usenix board of directors do not want
to explicitly celebrate the 50th anniversary of Unix.

It's been suggested that we, the TUHS members, both lobby the board and
also offer our assistance to help organisation such a celebration.

Who, on the list, would put their hands up to help organising something
that coincided with the 2019 Usenix ATC in July 2019?

I'd like to get the bare bones of an organising team, then approach the
Usenix board, offer our help and ask them to support us.

What do you think? 11 months to go.

Thanks, Warren

P.S. Nokia Bell Labs are also going to organise something, possibly a month
earlier but I have no solid details yet.

Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

Warren Toomey writes:
> Hi all, I've just heard that the Usenix board of directors do not want
> to explicitly celebrate the 50th anniversary of Unix.

Why not?!?

Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[Larry McVoy]

On Sat, Aug 25, 2018 at 06:04:24PM -0700, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
> Warren Toomey writes:
> > Hi all, I've just heard that the Usenix board of directors do not want
> > to explicitly celebrate the 50th anniversary of Unix.
> 
> Why not?!?

I had composed a reply and thought it was snarky, but what the heck.
There is a reason I stopped going to Usenix and this is just more
evidence that I made the right choice.

For those who care, here's the back story (and Clem fixed this but long
after I had pulled out).

Somewhere in the 1990's Victor Yodaiken wrote a really cool paper.  I was
one of the reviewers and Rob Gingell was as well (Rob was a Sun Fellow 
which was the equiv of a VP but in the technical track.  Great guy, I had
and have much respect for him).

Victor's paper was about how to do real time and a time sharing system
at the same time.  If you know operating systems you know that real time
and time sharing don't mix, people keep trying to mix them and it doesn't
really work.  The real time people talk about "good enough" but the people
who know math and operating systems know that you can't truly get both.

Victor got both.  He did it by creating a real time kernel that ran Linux,
all of Linux, the kernel and user space, as the real time kernel's idle
process.  Linux disabled interrupts, the RT kernel was like, yeah, sure
you did.  It was brilliant.  It worked.  I've seen demos where Linux is
running xperfmon, some other compute load, tarring up /home and untarring
on an NFS server, in other words, beating the crap out of the hardware,
and the RT kernel never missed an event.

Rob was part of the good old boys club that was Unix.  He had never heard
of Victor and he rejected the paper while I was a big fan (I believe this
paper was how I met Victor, I sought him out).  Rob came up with some noise
about how the RT kernel wasn't POSIX compliant (duh, then it wouldn't be
real time) but the real reason, I believe, was that Victor wasn't part of
the good old boys club.

Roll forward some years and I'm the chair of Linux expo.  It was 1998, early
days, but it was apparent that Linux was a thing.  And it was a Unix thing
that wasn't part of Usenix.  Ellie (or someone, maybe Honeyman, was he part
of the board?) came to me and asked me to pull the Linux folks into Usenix.
They offered me "anything" I wanted, be on the board, be on the review
committee, etc.  What I asked for was nothing for me, but something for
everyone, blind peer reviews of paper submissions.  They said no and 
I've not been to a Usenix conference since.  Clem says he cleaned house
but still, it's not blind reviews to this day so far as I know.

And it's a huge shame.  The world should have gotten to see Victor's
brilliant have your cake and eat it too real time / time sharing idea.
It didn't because of the old boys club and that's a bummer.

No disrespect to Rob, I think he was just in that space and sort of
knee jerked, he's a good guy, I think he just made a bad call that
time.

--lm

Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[Clem Cole]

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On Sat, Aug 25, 2018 at 9:11 PM Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote:

> Warren Toomey writes:
> > Hi all, I've just heard that the Usenix board of directors do not want
> > to explicitly celebrate the 50th anniversary of Unix.
>
> Why not?!?
>

Before I reply to the list, I also know some people on this list have a
distaste for some of the USENIX folks.  There were some problems in the
past with at least one important employee.   That has been corrected, but
the 'institutional memory' was also some what sacrificed as people such as
my self got a little burned out dealing with the issues.   That said, they
are good people and they have changed which is good.   But they are
primarily a more academic focused lot and as such, few of the people that
understand the value (much less were there) are activity involved.

That said, I made a proposal at the last BOD meeting in June that we do
something 'special' at the next USENIX.  I had a vetted the proposal with
Warren as well as a with a number of previous BOD members, including a
couple of past presidents.   I thought it made a lot of sense as did others.

Unfortunately, while it may be here, history for the sake of history is not
all that interesting to them.  So, the basic pitch is that until UNIX came
about, OSses were all over the map and everything was a different.  Except
for UNIX nothing from those days really is left except maybe Fortran and
that only for HPC.  Yet, today in most days, you (computer person or
mortal) can hardly not be using a UNIX system, from your cell phone, IoT
devices, car,  to search and Internet services.    No other part of
computing has had such an effect and been as pervasive and lastest.   We
need to celebrate how that happened and try to remember some of the
important things and people that made it so.

The boards response has been: *"**... agrees that we should acknowledge
this milestone appropriately. After much discussion, they concluded that
USENIX will do so throughout the course of its regularly scheduled and
budgeted activities.''   *Basically they want to say something at opening
session and maybe acknowledge a few people that come to ACT next summer,
but nothing like what we talked about.

I wanted to have a party at the History Museum in Seattle (ACT will be in
Renton).   The problem is that ACT no longer has a big party mid week, so
they don't have an event for this to occur.   Plus much of the board did a
little bit of a huh?  which in my translation is - "if it does not help us
academically, tell me why we need to do this again?"

BTW: One of the other thing that I socialized was how this community was
always open and inviting to people regardless of sexual orientation, race,
creed etc. There have been disagreements (which Larry can regale you on a
few as I know he holds a certain people responsible for bad things, ushc as
how the Linux community was handled).   But I wanted to try to see if we
could get some of the important women, not just the men (i.e. the Systers)
as well as some of the folks from the LGBQ community that were a part.
 It's an interesting social history as well as technical one.

My reply to the official email from Casey and Carolyn was:  *"**I do think
you should do something over and above.   As I said, I know a lot of people
are 'up' for it and what to do we be apart and keep asking what can they
do/what is going to be done.   There has been a bit of discussion on the
TUHS mailing list.   As I said, I've been in contract with Lou Katz, the
first USENIX President, and Debbie S (who was an early President) and
Andrew Hume (also ex-President).  All have expressed interest in helping
and think it would be a great idea to do something 'special' both to
recognize but also because it should be fun."*

I believe the BOD will support a BOF, but they are not going to fund bring
people back or anything over and beyond or an external party (although I'm
not opposed to asking a few people like Rich Adams who made $s with UNIX to
help us fund something).   So my comment to Warren was basically this
thought: if we try to make sure people are there and we set something up, I
know we can have BOF.   But if we plan it and arrange it and maybe we hit
bod@usenix.org with email we can do something.  I've been looking for a
good intro to the folks in Seattle, as I still think a party there would be
the best - but we need permission and then we need to find a way to fund it.

Clem

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Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[Larry McVoy]

> BTW: One of the other thing that I socialized was how this community was
> always open and inviting to people regardless of sexual orientation, race,
> creed etc. There have been disagreements (which Larry can regale you on a
> few as I know he holds a certain people responsible for bad things, ushc as
> how the Linux community was handled).   But I wanted to try to see if we
> could get some of the important women, not just the men (i.e. the Systers)
> as well as some of the folks from the LGBQ community that were a part.
>  It's an interesting social history as well as technical one.

I want just want to add to this comment Clem.  You are spot on in my
experience.  It's one of the bright spots of our industry, in my 
opinion (I can imagine that there are people who will disagree, this
is just what I've seen).

In my experience, nobody cared if you were male, female, gay, lesbian,
transgender, whatever, it was all cool if you could figure out this 
kernel panic, we'll kiss your ass (well, maybe not that but we'll buy
dinner at Harry's Hafbrau and that's better than a kiss).

I've watched a tech writer go from female to dude to female and nobody
cared, she was a good tech writer.

I'm sure there are people that will disagree but the world I lived in 
was super welcoming to people being different, all we cared about was
can you do your job.

--lm

Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[Dave Horsfall]

On Sun, 26 Aug 2018, Warren Toomey wrote:

> Hi all, I've just heard that the Usenix board of directors do not want 
> to explicitly celebrate the 50th anniversary of Unix.

What on earth are they smoking?  Or is it something in the water?

[...]

> What do you think? 11 months to go.

I'd love to help out in any way that I can, but now that I'm officially an 
Aged Pensioner I seem to be flat out for some reason...

And yes, I really must get that ACSnet (and UUCP) node going, but now that 
I have time for Amateur radio (and electronics in general) I really must 
clean off my workbench so that I can see my dining table again (and it's 
just as well that I'm divorced, as otherwise I soon would be).

-- Dave VK2KFU

Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[Theodore Y. Ts'o]

On Sun, Aug 26, 2018 at 12:47:45PM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Aug 2018, Warren Toomey wrote:
> 
> > Hi all, I've just heard that the Usenixh board of directors do not want
> > to explicitly celebrate the 50th anniversary of Unix.
> 
> What on earth are they smoking?  Or is it something in the water?

Reading between lines from Clem's message, I wonder if it is a money
issue?  Usenix has become very academic focused, and for better or for
worse the Linux Foundation has provided many conference facilitation
services for various industry initiatives that go beyond Linux (e.g.,
software defined networking, RISC-V, etc.)  As a result Usenix might
not have the resources that it did a decade or two ago.

In another reality these industry initiatives might have been
something that Usenix had gotten involved in, and which would have
made it much more relevant to the industry.  Unfortunately, I believe
that there were many "old-time Usenix" folk who felt very threatened
by Linux, and thought that it wasn't sufficiently academic, and didn't
sufficiently acknowledge the debt that was owed to their elders.

The question I would raise is whether some kind of 50th celebration
has to be colocated with Usenix ATC, especially if the Usenix BoD is
not innterested in lending much in the way of financial or staff
support.  For example, maybe something combined with some kind of
fund-raising event held at the Compute History Museum in the Bay Area?

Or perhaps the Linux Foundation might be willing to do a Unix 50th
celebration at their 2019 Open Source Summit event?

It does seem to me that Usenix ought to have the right of first
refusal to host such a celebration, but if the Board isn't willing to
step it up, there are other possibilities that could be explored.

    	     	     	     	       	   - Ted

Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[Kurt H Maier]

On Sun, Aug 26, 2018 at 10:31:27AM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
> 
> What do you think? 11 months to go.
> 
> Thanks, Warren
> 
> P.S. Nokia Bell Labs are also going to organise something, possibly a month
> earlier but I have no solid details yet.


Unsenix stopped being Usenix when they rode SAGE into the ground and
chased out all the sysadmins.  I appreciate the efforts of a lot of
people there to keep the flag up, but I've never understood the decision
to try to become ACM Lite (pastes great, less filling).  

I'm super interested in what Bell Labs has planned, and anything
happening at the Living Computer Museum as well.  Maybe if we ask nicely
they'll let us play with the Blit!

khm

Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[Kevin Bowling]

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This is all so asinine it sounds like it’s run by a random haughty social
club of people far detached from systems and UNIX and especially far from
publishing systems papers that actually advance the art. Sometimes it is
necessary to let an org know it’s become a joke.  I’d prefer to attend and
assist with something not affiliated with Usenix after reading this thread.

On Sat, Aug 25, 2018 at 10:36 PM Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net> wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 26, 2018 at 10:31:27AM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
> >
> > What do you think? 11 months to go.
> >
> > Thanks, Warren
> >
> > P.S. Nokia Bell Labs are also going to organise something, possibly a
> month
> > earlier but I have no solid details yet.
>
>
> Unsenix stopped being Usenix when they rode SAGE into the ground and
> chased out all the sysadmins.  I appreciate the efforts of a lot of
> people there to keep the flag up, but I've never understood the decision
> to try to become ACM Lite (pastes great, less filling).
>
> I'm super interested in what Bell Labs has planned, and anything
> happening at the Living Computer Museum as well.  Maybe if we ask nicely
> they'll let us play with the Blit!
>
> khm
>

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Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[Dave Horsfall]

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I know that I'll probably get into trouble for writing this (I'm a born 
stirrer, coming from a military family), but...

On Tue, 28 Aug 2018, Kevin Bowling wrote:

> This is all so asinine it sounds like it’s run by a random haughty 
> social club of people far detached from systems and UNIX and especially 
> far from publishing systems papers that actually advance the art. 
> Sometimes it is necessary to let an org know it’s become a joke.  I’d 
> prefer to attend and assist with something not affiliated with Usenix 
> after reading this thread.

I'm having trouble thinking of an OS (still in current use) that has 
remained *mostly* unchanged over 50 years.  Yes, Unix has certainly 
evolved, but is still recognisable as "do one thing, and do it well".

It's just a shame that they seem to have broken the other philosophy of 
"everything looks like a file".

-- Dave

Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[George Michaelson]

sockets broke that. ioctl() always felt like special magic to me, but
sockets+ioctl is not just special magic, its arcane.

I think part of the problem is that a network binding actually isn't
"just like a file" because it incudes things like out of order
delivery, and control (side) channel.

TBF, sparse files and network file systems is another place things
broke down. For some reason, device-special and sparse files wound up
being in the too hard basket for network mounts.

I know Lindsay Marshall of old, so have a soft spot for the newcastle
connections (.../mounthost/path/to/file) syntax. I always liked this.
On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 9:30 AM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
>
> I know that I'll probably get into trouble for writing this (I'm a born
> stirrer, coming from a military family), but...
>
> On Tue, 28 Aug 2018, Kevin Bowling wrote:
>
> > This is all so asinine it sounds like it’s run by a random haughty
> > social club of people far detached from systems and UNIX and especially
> > far from publishing systems papers that actually advance the art.
> > Sometimes it is necessary to let an org know it’s become a joke.  I’d
> > prefer to attend and assist with something not affiliated with Usenix
> > after reading this thread.
>
> I'm having trouble thinking of an OS (still in current use) that has
> remained *mostly* unchanged over 50 years.  Yes, Unix has certainly
> evolved, but is still recognisable as "do one thing, and do it well".
>
> It's just a shame that they seem to have broken the other philosophy of
> "everything looks like a file".
>
> -- Dave

Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, (yet)

[Clem Cole]

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I do not want to say too much yet ---  but I am making progress.  As people
have determined on this list, there are some real financial realities.
Warren asked me a question -- I answered it.  There is nothing (yet)
official.  But some things have occurred in the last few days that are
encouraging.  I will keep you all posted as it progresses.

What you can do it to say to bod@usenix.org you would like to see it
happen, particularly if you are a member of the organization (feel free to
CC me).   They need to hear that it is worthwhile and something they should
spend some effort and money doing.

Clem


ᐧ

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Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[Diomidis Spinellis]

On 26/08/2018 07:10, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
[...]
> The question I would raise is whether some kind of 50th celebration
> has to be colocated with Usenix ATC, especially if the Usenix BoD is
> not innterested in lending much in the way of financial or staff
> support.  For example, maybe something combined with some kind of
> fund-raising event held at the Compute History Museum in the Bay Area?
> 
> Or perhaps the Linux Foundation might be willing to do a Unix 50th
> celebration at their 2019 Open Source Summit event?
> 
> It does seem to me that Usenix ought to have the right of first
> refusal to host such a celebration, but if the Board isn't willing to
> step it up, there are other possibilities that could be explored.

One possibility might be to propose a "50th Unix Anniversary" Developer 
Room at FOSDEM 2019 [1].  FOSDEM is a free event for software developers 
to meet, share ideas and collaborate.  It takes place every year with 
thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over 
the world gathering in Brussels.

Our room can be used to host presentations related to topics such as the 
Unix history, the 50th anniversary, and the reconstruction efforts of 
historic editions.  The many *BSD and Linux folks that attend FOSDEM 
together with thousands of other open source aficionados provide an 
excellent audience for our event.  We can also combine the presentations 
with a TUHS stand where we can display running historic software.

The deadline for room proposals is September 20th and for stands 
November 2nd [2].  FOSDEM is entirely organized by volunteers and 
attendance is free without registration.  We don't have to pay anything 
for the room and the stand, but we also can't expect any funding from 
the organizers for flying people in.

[1] https://fosdem.org/2019/
[2] https://fosdem.org/2019/news/2018-08-10-call-for-participation/

Diomidis

Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently

[Clem cole]

I’ll ok into it. 

Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. 

> On Sep 5, 2018, at 5:31 PM, Diomidis Spinellis <dds@aueb.gr> wrote:
> 
>> On 26/08/2018 07:10, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
>> [...]
>> The question I would raise is whether some kind of 50th celebration
>> has to be colocated with Usenix ATC, especially if the Usenix BoD is
>> not innterested in lending much in the way of financial or staff
>> support.  For example, maybe something combined with some kind of
>> fund-raising event held at the Compute History Museum in the Bay Area?
>> Or perhaps the Linux Foundation might be willing to do a Unix 50th
>> celebration at their 2019 Open Source Summit event?
>> It does seem to me that Usenix ought to have the right of first
>> refusal to host such a celebration, but if the Board isn't willing to
>> step it up, there are other possibilities that could be explored.
> 
> One possibility might be to propose a "50th Unix Anniversary" Developer Room at FOSDEM 2019 [1].  FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate.  It takes place every year with thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gathering in Brussels.
> 
> Our room can be used to host presentations related to topics such as the Unix history, the 50th anniversary, and the reconstruction efforts of historic editions.  The many *BSD and Linux folks that attend FOSDEM together with thousands of other open source aficionados provide an excellent audience for our event.  We can also combine the presentations with a TUHS stand where we can display running historic software.
> 
> The deadline for room proposals is September 20th and for stands November 2nd [2].  FOSDEM is entirely organized by volunteers and attendance is free without registration.  We don't have to pay anything for the room and the stand, but we also can't expect any funding from the organizers for flying people in.
> 
> [1] https://fosdem.org/2019/
> [2] https://fosdem.org/2019/news/2018-08-10-call-for-participation/
> 
> Diomidis

Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, (yet)

[reed]

I thought I read a different email saying that there will be a track 
about the 50th anniversary. But cannot find any details or reference to 
it now.

Does anyone have information about Unix 50th celebration(s)?

Is it time for paper submissions? ...