[nycbug-talk] BSDCan-ikenotes - Exiting Tech, Exiting People

[Isaac Levy]

Final BSDCan ike-notes,


Exiting Tech, Exiting People:
--
Several topics which have been swarming around NYC*BUG seem to be 
moving foreword,

- CARP/PF native and stable on FreeBSD 5.4!
This is SERIOUSLY exiting.  I had the pleasure of drinking with Max 
Laier, who is the FreeBSD commiter for PF and CARP.  I'm told Gleb 
Smirnoff and Pyun YongHyeon started the port, (last year give or take).

- OpenBSD 3.7 was released a bit early on CD at the conference, but 
it's out and available this week to the world.

- The Intel hyperthreading vulnerability issue was disclosed and 
reviewed in detail, but we've all seen this by now, check here for more 
info:
http://kerneltrap.org/node/5103

- FreeBSD Roadmap Crib Notes-  After chatting with Michael Lucas, ( 
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/67 ) and picking the brains of a few 
FreeBSD commiters who were there early for the FreeBSD dev. summit, I 
got the basic skinny on the 5.x, 6.x, and 7.x release schedule for 
FreeBSD.  In a nutshell, things look quite good all around- and I'm in 
the testing process to *finally* migrate all my production life to 5.4. 
  FreeBSD 6.x is way less feature-packed than 5.x, with less fundamental 
changes- the aim is stability and speed.  Michael Lucas noted that the 
4.x FreeBSD's were soooo good, it's simply a hard act to follow.  With 
that the FreeBSD committers are all working hard to exceed the speed 
and stability of the 4.x branch.  FreeBSD 7.x was mentioned as well, as 
the  commiters have decided to move a bit faster with release versions- 
fewer features and functionality packed into forthcoming releases, 
(fewer than what we've got with 5.x!).

With that, things look great for the future of FreeBSD with regard to 
stability and speed.


- I got to briefly see Dru Lavigne again ( 
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/73 ), which is always a 
pleasure- but didn't get much time to talk.  She's been mad busy with 
the BSDCert crew, (Jim Brown, Mark Spitzer, and George Rosamond from 
our NYC crew are heavily involved too...) and and they held a great BOF 
session to address the community needs for a BSD certification program. 
  If you haven't done so already, go fill out the survey so the 
certification is relevant to YOU when it comes out!!!

http://www.bsdcertification.org/downloads/BSDCertSurvey01_en-us_ann.html

- With all of this, there were soooo many great people, conversations, 
ideas, and so much hacking around- I hope more of us can make it to 
BSDCan next year.  This conference is totally a sacred holiday to me 
now :)

##############
Special thanks should go out to Dan Languille, who PUTS ON BSDCAN ALL 
BY HIMSELF.  He's just plain awesome, period.
##############

Rocket-
.ike