From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.1 (2015-04-28) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.1 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [45.79.103.53]) by inbox.vuxu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id 949245bf for ; Sun, 26 Aug 2018 01:31:51 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 8FE77A1CEE; Sun, 26 Aug 2018 11:31:50 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7E657A19FC; Sun, 26 Aug 2018 11:31:35 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id C1671A19FC; Sun, 26 Aug 2018 11:31:32 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 74BA99B5FE for ; Sun, 26 Aug 2018 11:31:32 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id E48A035E0B8; Sat, 25 Aug 2018 18:31:31 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2018 18:31:31 -0700 From: Larry McVoy To: Lyndon Nerenberg Message-ID: <20180826013131.GD4893@mcvoy.com> References: <20180826003127.GA18905@minnie.tuhs.org> <69e611959cdd9902@orthanc.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <69e611959cdd9902@orthanc.ca> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Subject: Re: [TUHS] Usenix: no official Unix 50th celebration, apparently X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.20 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: tuhs@tuhs.org Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" 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