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<title>UniForum '98 Report LG #29</title>
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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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</H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<font color="navy">A <I>Linux Journal</I> Preview</font>:
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This article will appear in the August issue of <I>Linux Journal</I>.
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<center>
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<H1><font color="maroon">UniForum '98 Report</font></H1>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:phil@ssc.com">Phil Hughes</a></H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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I am writing this article as I fly back from the UniForum Association
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Spring '98 Conference. This was only the second East Coast conference
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held by UniForum in its 17 year history. It was held in Ocean City,
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Maryland--a beautiful town by the Atlantic Ocean.
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<p>
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UniForum is an advocacy
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organization that promotes the use of Open Computing solutions--or, to
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put it in succinct terms--the use of UNIX and UNIX-like solutions.
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UniForum and Usenix have tended to complement each other with UniForum
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being the conference for suits and Usenix the conference for T-shirts.
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<p>
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The conference was a two and a half day event that looked light on paper.
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Once there, I discovered there was too much to do in such a
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short time. For the first two days, there were three tracks: <i>New Open
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Software Development Model and Linux</i>, <i>Network Computing</i> and
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<i>Best of SCO Forum</i>. All tracks included common Plenary and Keynote
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sessions. On the third day there were two three-hour sessions: one presented by
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the Open Group and the other by Linux International.
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I attended all the Linux track sessions as well as the common sessions.
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<p>
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Monday's Plenary session was Eric Raymond's presentation of his paper <i>The
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Cathedral and the Bazaar</i> which is credited with convincing Netscape to
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take their Open Source stance.
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If you haven't heard the talk or read the paper, it is available on our
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Linux Resources page.
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<p>
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After Jon Hall introduced the Linux track, Frank Hecker, who is a systems
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engineer at Netscape, gave a talk entitled <i>The Why and the How</i> that
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filled in the background of Netscape's decision to embrace the Open
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Source model.
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For those of us who have been involved in what I call ``revolution from
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below''--that is, attempting to sell Linux or Open Source to those in the trenches
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and let it move up the corporate ladder--Frank had some interesting
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things to say.
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He said the engineers didn't believe Open Source could happen with
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Netscape. So, Frank went to Marc Andreessen with the idea, and the rest is
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history.
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<p>
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After Frank's talk, we got together for the keynote lunch where Ralph
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Nader (<A HREF="./uniforum2.html">UniForum Press Release</A>) spoke on the Microsoft monopoly and how Linux could be a big player
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in an alternate solution.
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It was a treat to get to meet Ralph and to hear the
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word Linux come out of his mouth just a few days after hearing Marc
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Andreessen saying it.
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I brought up how U.S. government procurements used to require a
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POSIX-compliant operating system be made available with any system they
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purchased, and Ralph and his staffers are going to look into why that
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requirement was dropped.
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I asked him to keep <i>LJ</i> up to date on any findings, but you might also
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wish to check out his web site at http://www.essential.org/.
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<p>
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Two afternoon sessions were held in the Linux track.
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The first was presented by Ron Workman of Cygnus Solutions, and the second
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was presented by me. Covering mine is easy--I went through a series of
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articles which have appeared in our <i>Linux Means Business</i> column,
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illustrating how companies identified a problem, then used Linux to
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address that problem.
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<p>
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Ron's talk addressed Open Source software from a different direction:
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how a company can succeed in the business of supporting freely
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available software. Cygnus was
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founded in 1989 to provide commercial support for open Internet technologies
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and has grown to 160 employees. The company has succeeded by offering
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consulting and support on such products as the Free Software
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Foundation's GNU C Compiler.
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<p>
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Monday evening was filled with good food and bad beer (Coors
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Light?--lucky Linus wasn't there) at a beach party hosted by Red Hat
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Software.
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Like most parties at these conferences, the evening was filled with
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meeting others and talking about computers, the UNIX market and telling
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Microsoft jokes.
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I found it a valuable time to get to know people better, for example, Morgan Von
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Essen and Garry Paxinos of Metro Link, and to thank Alan Fedder and Kathy
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Goetz of UniForum for organizing the conference.
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<p>
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Tuesday morning started with a Plenary by Eid Eid, President of Corel
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Computer (see <i>LJ</i>, Issue 48). If I had to choose one person who provided
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me with the most
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new information, I would choose Eid. I did cheat a little however, as I also
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talked to him extensively over lunch.
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<p>
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Eid's Plenary was a pleasant combination of future fantasy and a look at
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what is available today. The fantasy part consisted of describing a day in
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the life of Mr. Twenty O'One, illustrating what we should
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expect in the near future (2001 isn't that far away) from our personal
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communicator: voice- and e-mail access,
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voice commands and an interface to the Corel NetWinder.
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<p>
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At the office, Mr. Twenty O'One will have a typical Intel-based PC
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but most of his work will be done on his personal communicator and his
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NetWinder. The NetWinder is much faster for doing common tasks
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because, while it is a complete Linux system, common tasks (everything
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from e-mail to video conferencing and replying to e-mail with a
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voice message automatically appended to e-mail) are trivial to
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access.
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<p>
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After this fictional introduction, Eid went on to cover the pieces which
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actually exist today, including the NetWinder, video conferencing, XML and capable
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portable systems.
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He went on to say that we need to make all the interfaces and
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standards open so any vendor can produce pieces which interoperate.
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I expect some people were surprised when he said, ``Corel, Lotus and
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others
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will have no choice but to provide some source code for commercial
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products in the near future.''
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<p>
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Eid also pointed out that Microsoft
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controls over 50% of the money made on PC applications.
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Eid was the Chief Technical Officer for Corel Corporation, makers
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of CorelDraw and owner of Corel Computer before coming President of Corel
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Computer.
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He explained how Corel had been a Microsoft partner until Corel acquired
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WordPerfect, then Microsoft started hiding technology from them.
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<p>
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As many of us have concluded in the past, Eid believes you cannot
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successfully fight Microsoft, but went on to point out what you can do.
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He sees the network computer as the new wave, being less costly and more
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maintainable.
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The network computer opens up a new market and, done right, it can become a
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market as large as today's personal computer market.
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<p>
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The morning session in the Linux Track included a presentation by Don
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Rosenberg of Stromian Technologies on making money with Open Source as
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an OEM/VAR.
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Differing from Ron Workman's presentation of the previous day, Don's
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presentation was a mini-tutorial on how to get into a market and how to
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make the right distribution choices along the way.
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<p>
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Next, Morgan Von Essen, President of Metro Link, with the help of Garry
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Paxinos, Vice President, presented a talk on Metro Link's cooperative
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work with the XFree86 community--another model of a commercial
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enterprise working with the free software community.
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In this case, they developed technology needed for their
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commercial customers and then gave that technology back to the
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XFree86 community. Doing this makes it easier for Metro Link to continue
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development, because their work becomes standard in new XFree86 releases.
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<p>
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Tuesday's keynote lunch was presented by Janpieter Scheerder who was
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President of Sunsoft and has now moved to head the storage division of Sun.
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He talked about WebTone and made some very interesting points
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demonstrating how the non-Microsoft community is growing faster than
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the Microsoft community.
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His pointed out that while MS Windows sales are growing at 13% a year,
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companies like Cisco are growing at 30%, and that while there are over
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100,000,000 MS/PC users, that number is a small minority of the six
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billion people on the planet.
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He also pointed out that every Quicken user who registers their product
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is a UNIX user since the Quicken on-line registration server runs on
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Sun systems.
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<p>
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Janpieter explained that today most ISVs will port their product to
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either NT or Solaris. By
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mentioning an old Dutch saying, ``the enemy of my enemy is my
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friend,'' he clearly
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sees Linux as an ally. By the same reasoning, we need to see Sun ports as
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potential Linux ports of the future.
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<p>
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Janpieter, like Eid, pointed out that the network computer is in--all
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we need is a $150 device to connect to the Internet.
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He then went on to talk about two subjects: first
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``OPEN-standardization''
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and then Java.
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This got a reaction from both Eric Raymond and Eid Eid, who both pointed out that
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for Java to be the answer, its standard needs to be open.
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There was no resolution, but I am sure we were heard.
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<p>
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The afternoon Linux track brought Bob Young discussing the size of the
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Linux market or, more accurately, explaining how hard it is to come up
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with an accurate estimate.
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Bob also announced the availability of the <i>Extreme Linux</i> CD which
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includes all the Beowulf RPMs for those of you who want to build your
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own supercomputer.
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Jon Hall of Linux International closed the track with some general
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comments and preparation work for the workshop the following morning.
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<p>
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On Wednesday the Linux track attendees changed their plans and
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attended the first hour of a presentation entitled <i>What Exciting
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Technology is Emerging?</i> by The Open Group, the organization that owns
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the UNIX brand and standards.
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In this presentation, the Open Group announced the UNIX'98 standard.
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<p>
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Historically, vendors such as Digital, Hewlett-Packard and Sun have paid
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a lot of money to use the UNIX brand.
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This money goes to support The Open Group's work on the standards and
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enforcement of the trademark.
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While it would be great for Linux or a Linux distribution to be UNIX
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branded, the cost is prohibitive.
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<p>
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The Open Group has now
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recognized the advantage of getting the Linux community on board.
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While Sun and others anchor the high end of the Open Systems community,
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having an entry-level system compatible with the standard would be a plus.
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This is not yet a done deal. While the use of the
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UNIX trademark is limited to those who have paid the fees, the
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opportunity will be present for a system to be conformant with the standard.
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Stay tuned, this could be the <i>in</i> necessary to tighten the bond
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between Linux and the rest of the UNIX community.
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<p>
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For more information on the UNIX'98 standard, see the web page
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<A HREF="http://www.UNIX-systems.org/">http://www.UNIX-systems.org/</A>.
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<p>
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The melding of minds with regard to UNIX standards, Open Computing and Open
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Source software needs a venue and UniForum has elected to be that venue.
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Here's what Alan Fedder (<A HREF="./uniforum.html">UniForum Press Release</A>), President of UniForum had to say about it:
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<p>
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<blockquote>
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UniForum Association is the only forum for open
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discussion and open debate about open computing.
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Where else could Eric Raymond and Mike Lambert [of The Open Group]
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debate each other, listen to each other, and have a
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better understanding of each other's position? Where
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else could you hear Ralph Nader, Eid Eid, Janpieter
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Scheerer, Eric Raymond--all quoting Eric Raymond?
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Momentous things happened at the UniForum Spring
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Conference in Ocean City--and I honestly believe
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that five years from now, 5,000 people will be telling
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each other they were there when UNIX was saved.
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<p>
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</blockquote>
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In conclusion, I found attending the conference to be truly worthwhile
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and look forward to going again next year.
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1998, Phil Hughes <BR>
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Published in Issue 29 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, June 1998</H5></center>
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