Unix SIG by Chris Fearnley

I will be out of town for the March meeting.  Allan Walters has agreed
to fill in for me.  Thanks, Allan!  See you all in April.

The First Conference on Freely Redistributable Software

I attended the First Conference on Freely Redistributable Software
held in Cambridge, Mass on February 4.  The conference was very
well attended -- at least 500 people (by my estimates) in the main
conference room.  Many of the attendees were free software developers and
entrepreneurs whose businesses rely upon freely redistributable software.

Linus Torvalds, the principle author of the Linux kernel gave an opening
keynote speech.  Linus is a very good speaker -- if you get the chance
to hear him speak, don't miss it!  He reported that some company (I think
it was Linux FT, but I'm not sure) paid the money to have Linux certified
POSIX 1 compliant.  He said that those patches would be going into Linux
2.0 which he hopes will be "ready for prime time" in a couple of months.

Dr. Gregory Wettstein of the Roger Maris Cancer Center gave the most
energizing talk.  He explained how all the free software now available
has allowed him to dramatically increase the effectiveness and efficiency
of the clinical monitoring of patients on chemo with their peer-to-peer
networked Linux boxes.  He said he wouldn't trust a proprietary system
to deliver the timely support that his organization needs in order to
offer the highest caliber of cancer care possible to their patients.
He said their treatment center depends upon Linux and other free software
to treat their critically ill patients and it has never let them down!
He even cited a recent example where the freedom that free software offers
let them save a life, a life that almost certainly would have been lost
at any other cancer center.  As I said his talk was very inspiring and
energizing and motivating.

Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation gave the
concluding keynote speech.  Stallman is full of ethics, morality and
philosophy.  I must admit to being friendly to his philosophy, but I
long ago abandoned ethics and morality in favor of personal thought-out
values (no more second-hand morals!).  So much of his bantering seemed
much like the political and religious warrioring that so appalls me.
Anyway, I'm glad he leads the FSF (Free Software Foundation) --- it's
important to have a few "ethical" people around!

There were several other interesting talks and the Conference
Proceedings are available from the FSF.  It was very encouraging to
see so many people involved with free software!!