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BSD Operating Systems

BSDCon 2000: Oct. 14-20 36

Posted by Nik from the NP:-When-doves-cry dept.
Should you be anywhere near the Hyatt Regency in Monterey, Calif. in mid-October then you'll be perfectly placed to attend this year's BSD Conference. More details can be had from the Conference Web site, or from the precis you'll see if you read on.

This is the second annual BSD Conference, after the success of the last one at Berkeley Marina. All BSD users are welcome, and encouraged to attend.

This year highlights will include:

  • BSD Internals tutorial, by Kirk McKusick
  • Conference dinner at the Monterey Aquarium
  • Talks by BSD users, and members of the commercial community

It's all happening at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, and runs from Oct. 14 to Oct. 20. The first tutorial is on the 14-15th, Kirk's internals tutorial covers the 16-17th, and the rest of the conference is from the 18th to the 20th.

Naturally, these things cost money. It's $495 to attend the conference itself, and another $495 to attend a tutorial. (There are two tutorial sessions, one is on 14-15, the other is on 16-17. The second one is Kirk's BSD internals tutorial, the first one is TBA. Room rates at the Hyatt are $129 a night.

If you're a BSD user or developer and would like to present a paper at the conference then get writing. Contact Jim Mock with your ideas, or for more information about the topics they are looking for.
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BSDCon 2000: Oct. 14-20 More

BSDCon 2000: Oct. 14-20

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  • I agree wholeheartedly. A lot of naysayers are predicting that Linux will act just like M$ when its time comes, but we're all hoping that it stays true to its fonding principles.... Life, Liberty.... er, yeah.

    One of the way to be sure that Linux's penquin head doesn't inflate the way Gate$' has is to keep and support viable competition.

  • BSDCon Prices (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have read a lot of messages saying that BSDCon is expensive. If BSD is somehow related to your business, however, you could probably(?) take tax deductions on the expenses or have your employer pay for the trip.
  • Why did they have to schedule it in October? We already have the Atlanta Linux Showcase scheduled for October 10-14. IMO ALS is the last great technical Linux conference left. I would guess the BSD one would also me a great technical conference also, which makes it such a shame that they both need to be one right after another.

    Does no one do any research before scheduling these conferences?
  • Dismissing anything that isn't as great as Linux is really dumb (lack for a better word).

    Each operating system has their own niche market or group. Sure, FreeBSD may not support the latest and greatest hardware and software, but do all workstations and servers need that stuff? Probably not. Just to bring up something is that FreeBSD 3.3/3.4 had very good USB support and I was able to actually use several devices I couldn't get working under several distributions of Linux (even reading through the documents).

    Do the most popular kids in high school always end up with the best job or a good image? Not always. I prefer BSD over Linux (not because of the BSD v. GPL thing) but rather I like to use it as a server operating system and to do basic word processing and e-mail. Since I already have the mirror'd files from the CD on my BSD machine, I just pop in the boot diskette and install it on my other machine in 15-20 minutes flat.

    I could care less if I didn't have sound or DVD (that's what my TV and audio system is for). I don't play games so I don't need game support that Linux provides.

    I didn't say that you hated nor liked either license, but I'm just saying that there are places where alternatives are good (like in licenses... I myself prefer the BSD license over the GPL license, but more on the purpose that it's more free for corporations and corporate developers).
  • I agree with you. The idea of $500 to talk about a free product is rather ridiculous.
  • "You Linux people think that you are so cool..."

    Other than the fact that we are cool, many of us like BSD also. I don't see why any of you feel it is necessary to turn on the flames.

    As for there being no apps, this type of attitude may be perpetuating this reality.

    Long live BSD and Linux. Use which ever best fits your needs, I say.

  • MacOS X (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I wonder if MacOS X will be discussed. I bet alot of applications will be ported to *BSD because of MacOS X. A nice little side effect. Also: is Darwin considered a BSD? Will normal *BSD apps work under Darwin. I think JC ported X to Darwin. Anyone hear anything else about that? I wonder if Dawin will ever become an OS in its own right.

    Trolling for Scooby doo!

  • Exactly how much do you think it costs to rent a place for holding the conference and organize a conference? We're probably talking about a meeting of a few hundred people, so trust me nobody is getting rich here.

    Well, Defcon is held yearly in Las Vegas. A couple hundred people come. They have speakers. It's $50.

    Yep, I'd have to agree it's overpriced. I'd love to go to a BSDcon but not for that kind of money. If I'm going to spend that much dough, I'd rather go to a SANS conference where I get a bunch of hard copy literature with the lectures.

    LiNT

  • There were top geeks from the MacOS X project at the last Con. They even gave a talk and handed out CDs.
  • I get my coffe across the street from the Hyatt and I can never get any goddamn parking when they're in town. Worse yet, with geek conferences (like when NGIO was there a few months back) I have to wait in line for my coffee for half an hour. I don't even like BSD. Why can't they have a Linux Expo?
  • i think the conference lasts six days. We're not talking about renting a small room in the back of an obscure hotel but probably a nice and expensive hotel with good facilities. Then you also need lots of people to organize this and they're probably not all volunteers. Most likely the conference fee does not cover everything. That would explain the sponsoring link on their page. I have attended some scientific conferences. Generally those are organized by none profit organizations. The prices are comparable.

    Having a well organized conference makes it possible to invite important people (which usually is essential for delivering a good conference). Keeping the price high also prevents that there will be masses of newby hackers rather than really interested people.
  • I thought linux users wanted freedom and choice of what OS they use, oh wait you can have the choice to run linux and thats all. Evidently hotmail and cdrom.com have a need for BSD. Can't you see its the same guy that always does this with BSD?
  • Well, maybe someone should ask the organizers of the BSDCon what their break-even attendance is, then consider whether it's too expensive or not.

    The not-for-profit association I work for runs educational conferences around the world, once conference a year in each of five "areas."

    Registration fees for our members for the NA Conference were $1,300 and for non-members were $1,450. Our break-even attendence was 350 attendees. That means that we needed 350 people to attend so that we didn't end up in the red. We made it for this conference. We don't always make it for every conference.

    Conferences are *expensive* especially when non-for-profit organizations run them. You don't want to be taking money away from the bottom line - in this case, that would affect the money going into the BSD development efforts. The conference has to pay for itself.
  • If linux is so great why does 90% of the world use windows?
  • Exactly how much do you think it costs to rent a place for holding the conference and organize a conference? We're probably talking about a meeting of a few hundred people, so trust me nobody is getting rich here.

    :) somebody has to pay for the free beer!
  • Isn't the idea of Linux (and other open source projects, including the different BSD projects) to allow for freedom of choice and the ability to get and work with the source code (and to some, free beer)? If so, why diss another alternative?

    If another company were to produce another viable alternative to the Transmete Crusoe chip, will you diss it because it's not linked with Linux or Linus?

    I know many people have a religious hatred against the BSD license, but it's an alternative open source license. Sure the BSD license used to have the advertising clause and the ability for anyone to take and commercialize a product. But each license has their own goal and differences, allowing for additional choice and a better fit in different scenarios. Think if everything had to be GPL'd? It might not be as great as you think, since the lack of choice becomes an issue and undermines the point of open source.

    If you hate BSD so much, just work with what you like and don't cause a flamewar or diss products with such open ignorance.


  • Someone moderate this back up. It's not a troll and deserves a reply.

    D.

  • Cons (Score:2)

    by zpengo ( 99887 )
    It's amazing how much money these conferences pull in. Are there any cons that *don't* cost several hundred dollars to attend?

    The only people who are going to these things tend to be the ones who are already convinced that they are A Good Thing (tm). This is to say, you're not going to see a whole lot of Microsoft people at this one.

    While that might sound like a good thing, it's not doing a lot for spreading alternative ideas. The Linux people go to Linux cons, the BSD people go to BSD cons, etc.

    But then again, I suppose it's always been that way....

  • Please don't hate me because I'm right, but attending MacWorld is under several hundred dollars.

    That's probably not what you're looking to hear, but still, it's true.

  • I'd love to, but wayyy too expensive. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I understand that it costs money to make cons happen, and because of BSD's (and I'm a BSDer, so I don't mean this in an insulting way) small userbase, but I think that $500 is just too much money. Going to a BSDcon is one of my personal dreams, but I'm sorry, I can't spend $1000 to go to the con and hear Kirk talk, as much as I would like to.

    I also wish they'd try having it someplace else. I know, I know, it's Berkely, but every year?? Why did they even bother taking suggestions on their site if they were just going to stay in Berkeley again? I voted for New York or DC.

    BSDcon fee: $500
    1st tutorial fee: $500
    2st tutorial fee: $500
    Lodging for six nights at Regency: $780
    Travel, and other expenses: $500
    A week in California with a bunch of fellow BSD freaks: priceless...?

    I'll bet I could knock at least $200 off the room by just staying at a cheaper hotel. But that's still over $2500 to get the full BSDcon experience.

    $2500 could buy me several new PCs. It could almost buy me a G4 to run OSX (which I want to try out since it's BSD with a Mac UI). I already have the "Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD OS" book that the CSRG members wrote a few years ago. What more am I going to learn from him in those two days?

    I'm sure it'll be a great time, but I, and many other BSD developers, just won't be able to go. Not everyone is a whorish contractor. Some of us have startups, and some of us are students, and some of us are in other countries. I'll bet if you lowered the prices, you'd make it up with increased attendance.

    I'm not going to be unrealistic, but most anime cons are $50, max, for three days, and that's usually without sponsors, and at hotels as good as or better than the Regency. I'd really like to know why it can't be, say $200 for BSDcon. Trying to make BSD seem l337 by only letting rich people come to the con isn't helping anyone. (Oops, but yourselves!)

    I'm going to have my own BSDcon. Anyone who wants to come to my house in DC during the *other* con in October, is welcome. I won't have any CSRG members, but we'll have good times, good caffeine, good brew, and a shitload of BSD systems. And it won't cost you $500.

  • judging by the prices, this conference must a doing of that little red devil.

    Biggy
  • I do not know why you would make such a stupid statement. Both operating systems have different goals, developers, design methods, release cycles and idealogical licenses.

    Would you recommend everyone working on KDE jump over to gnome, or everyone working on xml schema production system y to move over to xml schema production system t? How about we kill all distributions and conglomerate into one big mass, which will magically fulfill all goals and objectives that each team originally set out upon?

    This comment is not worthy of moderation, because it is utter stupidity. This unthinking belief of hype and "world domination" is somewhat disturbing.

  • Re:Cons (Score:1)

    by god ( 219136 )
    As it so happens, the unofficial Perl conference named yapc::America [yapc.org] (Yet Another Perl Conference) costs $75 for three full days of talks and whatnot. The idea isn't to fleece people to death, but instead provide an interesting medium for discusssion about Perl.

    A European YAPC (yapc::Europe [yapc.org]) is also being planned, but as it'll be in London accomodation will cost way more than the conference fees :-(

  • You guys aren't giving us much to work with. Where are the details? The site is lacking in DETAILS. I must have DETAILS. FEED ME.
  • Now that Linux is so popular is there any need for another free Unix-based operating system?

    No, there isn't. But people may want an alternative, even if they don't need one. By your logic, Coke and PepsiCo should combine forces to make the ultimate soft drink, and Ford and GM should join to work on perfecting the motor vehicle. Diversity is good. If people want to develop BSD, who are you to tell them they'd be better off putting their efforts into Linux? From a purely commercial point of view, if there was a single company controlling the direction of both BSD and Linux, it would make sense to merge the two. Thankfully, real life isn't like that.

  • Re:Is there a need for BSD? (Score:3)

    by seebs ( 15766 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2000 @06:02AM (#1861238) Homepage
    Imagine that Windows was open-sourced. Would you move to Windows? No. You'd stick with Linux, because you believe that the design is enough better that there's no hope of *ever* getting Windows up to the code quality of Linux.

    Now, I'm not saying Linux is anywhere near as bad as Windows, or even necessarily "bad" in any absolute sense, but I'd much rather work on BSD systems than on Linux, and no, I *can't* just "change Linux" to make it meet my needs.

    You can't just mash philosophies together. SVR4 is a total disaster because it can't decide whether it's SysV or BSD. So, I can't take the Linux kernel design, add the design ideas I want, and expect to get a meaningful result.

    You can't "merge" everything. Some things are sufficiently different that the best you can hope for is coexistance and compatability.

    Yes, there's still a need for BSD. From a technical standpoint, there's probably still a need for more than one, just as there's a need for all the little branches and offshoots of Linux that crop up from time to time.
  • I recall seeing an ad for a M$-centric conference that was for like, 3 days and $1500.00 or something like that. Another one was almost $5,000.00
  • Darwin *IS* a full-blown OS in its own right. It's even been built over to x86 machines.

    It's no slouch. I managed to actually have a functional Darwin System on my Lombard G3. I built emacs and lynx under it fine...
  • s/hundred people/thousand people

    also note that for the last two years, defcon was paid for by it's sister, black hat...a $1000 a head conference.

    BSDCon is in a MUCH nicer hotel than Defcon, and includes such things as the dinner. Last year, they took a dinner cruise ship around the SF Bay, free of charge to attendee's. This year, the dinner is at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, again, free for attendee's. Not to mention the fact they give out goodie bags, serve 2 meals a day, and have a free beer bash.

    sqweak
  • Yeah... :P

    "What kind of music do you have here?"

    "Oh, we have BOTH kinds! Country AND Western!"

  • First, begin by ditching /proc from Linux, since BSD developers have all reached the conclusion /proc sucks very badly. When you are done with that, we can begin transplanting BSD's vm/buffer cache (of course, we'll need at least two user-selectable versions, to accomodate the way Net and FreeBSD does this), getting a decent FFS into Linux so you can finally ditch ExtFS, get rid of that horrible glibc and use the trustworthy BSD libc, get rid of this SysVism rc Linux use for the good old BSD-style rc and...

    Well, ditch /proc, and then we can get into more details into how we are going to ditch all the other bad things in Linux until it looks exactly like BSD. I just don't know why go to such trouble to get a BSD called "Linux", but...

  • I used SVR4 systems of various sorts, including Solaris 7, for ages. It was a horrifically split system. Just try using the Berkeley side of an SVR4 box, and watch in horror. Oh, they've probably fixed the most obvious stuff, like "stat" giving corrupted data if you link with the ucb C library, but it's still nightmarish.
  • like there isn't enough BSD around Berkley. Don't you think we should get these guys to see more of the country and "get out" a bit more? 8^)

  • Boo to Slashdot. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't like the way you wrote the article. You made it sound like "Well if you happen to be in Moneterey, CA during Mid-October you might as well check out the BSD Con", otherwise saying "Don't bother going to the BSD Con unless you are in the area during Mid-October" or "I wouldn't go out of my way for this."

    My vote is for Richard Harney
  • Don't you think compitition is a Good Thing(tm)? Why would MS need compitition when Linux don't? I know it is a difference when it is open-source, but I think it's still positive.
  • According to the conference's website:

    The cost of the conference is $495. If you register before September 1, 2000, you qualify for the early-bird discount of $50 off.

    Still, $495 is not expensive for a high-tech conference of any sort. If you look at some of the seminars and developer conferences held by Seimens, Microsoft, Oracle or any other companies, the BSDCon is pretty inexpensive. It is pretty expensive to hold a 3-4 day conference in California for hundreds of people. Conferences aren't really BSDi's main source of income (it's the CD's and BSDI's products/services).

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