Member Contributed Articles
2000a: BLU/AIP
(by David Kramer; January 19, 2000)
Meeting Notes - BLU/AIP, Wed 19 Jan 2000
Meeting Notes
Taken by David Kramer
- Announcements
- MS licensing W2K
- If you license W2K you have to purchase an internet kit and a DAL (Domain Access License) and a SAL (Service Access License, monthly fee)
- A link will be posted from AIP's site.
- AIP
- AIP will be holding their meeting on a different night so we can be members of both.
- http://boston.us.association.org
- Future meetings
- February- Photo editing with Gimp
- March- Apache/php/mysql
- April- Eric Raymond
- Shore.net- Rich Brown
- Shared a house with Richard Stallman, and that's what got him into geekdom.
- Worked at DEC for a while.
- Talked about the evolution of free software, Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation.
- Talked about Linus, who started out writing a terminal emulator and ended up writing a compiler then an operating system.
- Now that Linux is pretty mature, will open source diminish in favor of commercial development?
- 1994 Apache published as an extension of ncsa httpd
- Andover.net- Bruce Twickler Pres/CEO,Kurt (developer), Josh Freeman(Open Source community relations)
- Named andover.net because Bruce lives in Andover, and the company originally was run from his house
- In business for 8 years
- Transmeta announcement- Crusoe processor
- Very low power/low heat via LongRun power management
- Code morphing technology
- X86 compatibility
- Started out selling software
- They own /., freecode, freshmeat, gifworks, and thinkgeek
- They make money from advertising, ecommerce (thinkgeek), corporate services (working on it).
- Josh has written a paper showing how using open source tools is actually a better option for support than commercial software, because
- peer review produces better software
- more people trying to fix it
- You can fix it yourself.
- Also more likely to be multiplatform, so you're not tied to one vendor.
- Big problem with Linux takeover in corporations is Office software compatibility
- Applixware is extremely close, and stays updated with MS's format changes.
- server51 freshmeat.net- box for open source development
- Each project will have a listserve
- /. runs on six or so Intel debian boxes
- 1 for images, 1 for mysql, a few from static content, 1 for ads
- mysql supports 256 max concurrent connections, so apache is throttled down to 65 max concurrent. They are working with the MySql group on transaction processing and scalability. These changes will become part of the main product.
- They used a load-balanced switch, but it didn't work for them, so now they use dns round robin.
- Other companies are offering pay-per-question support and advice. Andover is thinking of scaling this to an online support interface for companies that contract the service. They can also offer filtered news and announcements.
- Also looking into open source project management and matchmaking like sourceexchage.
- Kurt says the desktop market is not worth fighting for. Game machines, corporate backend, and embedded systems are where linux will succeed.
- Q+A after talks
- What's happening with bandwidth
- Everyone is building colocation space
- Big transatlantic pipe from here to Ireland in a year or two
- The last mile is going to take a lot longer.
- Announcements
- Lucent is moving Inferno (what is it? Communications server?) to a private group in a semi-open environment.
- !!!!!Beowulf class 3:00pm tomorrow bldg 66-144.
- http://www.bursys.com has a very portable Intel box with 2-4 PCI slots, etc. Made to fix 4-across in a rack
- 128MB 500celeron, 9GB IDE, floppy, $2K
- No UL rating for the box as a whole
- Gayle Valenport old Taus Corp is a sysadmin company
- Everybody is hiring.
- Next installfest at Bell Atlantic Marlboro
- Next MIT swapmeet third Sunday in April
- AIP next meeting fourth Wednesday of February
Who's Who
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| Gary Trujillo of AIP | Rich Braun of Shore.Net | Bruce Twickler of Andover.Net | Joshua Freeman of Andover.Net | Kurt Gray of Andover.Net |
