USENIX

George Rosamond <george at nycbug dot org>

The 2004 USENIX Annual Technical Conference was held in Boston from June 27 to July 2nd.

While I didn't attend too many meetings, I found USENIX to be an amazing experience.

I did attend Kirk McKusick and Peter Salus' meeting on UNIX history, which provided a fascinating perspective on a standard topic.

So often people think that "open source" is an invention of the 1990's, when it was actually the modus operandi of the first decades of UNIX. Collaboration and passing application development between developers at different sites and on different continents was the norm, and not the exception.

The variety of individuals I met amazed me.

Michael Lucas, who I've corresponded with a few times, was probably the funniest single individual I met. His constant flow of jokes and straight-forward friendly demur was comforting to all.

Scott Long, a developer with the FreeBSD project, was another person who was down-to-earth and genuine. So many developers you meet through your professional life are aloof and socially confused. Scott was a pleasure to speak with.

Matt Dillon of DragonFlyBSD enarmoured me with a quick overview of the direction of his project, and has guaranteed that DragonFly will be running on a test box in my office.

Kirk McKusick, who probably deserves something of a god-like status in the BSD community, amazed me with his openess to spending a few minutes at several points during the conference to listen to any concern or question, and patiently follow-through.

Eric Allman, whose humbleness is remarkable considering it's his Sendmail that has a longevity like few other programs and continues to push the majority of mail on the internet. With someone with his history, you'd never expect him to reply frankly to queries about Sendmail with, "Uh, I don't know, they don't really let me touch the code anymore," or "That sounds right," when venturing that he's not perfect. It's attitudes like that which maintain a healthy environment in the free UNIX world.

It was truly odd that Marlon Brando died while I drove back from Boston on Friday, since I can imagine that Brando's presence was probably similar to that of Peter Salus. His biting humor and irony, not without some degree of technical bravado, kept him the center of any discussion which he was a part of. He was quick to laugh and quicker to make others laugh.

It was a also great to see Bosko Milekic, a FreeBSD developer from Montreal. At the ripe young age of 22, Bosko borrowed my iBook several times to get some work done, and his furious typing tells me he attended the conference despite deadlines he was expected to meet.

I was truly stunned at the efficiency and pleasant nature of the USENIX staff, including Cat Allman and Anne Dickison. What a breath of fresh air after dealing with so many dud-heads in the past who were concerned more with the daily numbers than with the technology the conferences supposedly were for in the first place.

There's so many others I enjoyed conversations with, and I apologize to the many not included.

As Jesse Callaway, who assisted BSD Mall and Daemon News at the table, and myself are members of the *BSD User Group in New York City, we also hooked up with a number of BSD people from the NYC-area, many of whom were aware of our group. Our NYCBUG talk mailing list quickly shot up in membership, and more good technical friends were made.

USENIX conferences are not to be missed. The meetings were open technically, had topics that were well-thought out and ultimately created an environment of serious discussion. It's a great privilege to be with over 900 of the best and the brightest of technology.

Here are some photographs from Matt Dillon of DragonFlyBSD.