[CDBUG-talk] A question to start things. . .

[G. Rosamond]

On Dec 23, 2004, at 4:44 PM, Garance A Drosihn wrote:

> At 3:36 PM -0500 12/17/04, G. Rosamond wrote:
>> There are now 4 people subscribed to the list. [...]
>>
>> I have a question:
>>   Does anyone use a BSD in a work environment?  University?
>>
>> Why don't we get some blood flowing on this list by starting
>> with everyone's backgrounds in technology.
>
> I wanted to wait a little before saying anything, so there would
> be more than three other people on the mailing list...   :-)

LOL. . . . I think we've past the half dozen mark, maybe even the half 
baker's dozen mark. . .

Although you can't count me. . . I'm in Brooklyn.

>
> Well, my name is Garance Drosehn.  It happens that if you go back in
> my family tree, the last name was originally spelled Drosihn, so I
> have some email accounts that use the alternate spelling for the name.
>
> I am also gad at FreeBSD.org, which is to say I am one of the committers
> to the FreeBSD base system.  I started dabbling with FreeBSD sometime
> around 1995, though initially I would just pick up the source for
> some specific modules, and compile those on other OS's.  I think that
> the first release which I actually installed somewhere was 2.2.5.  I
> became a committer in October 2000.  I was mainly brought in to work
> on lpr/lpd, but I have worked on other areas.  Biggest contributions
> (outside of lpr) are probably to 'newsyslog' and 'ps'.  I also put
> together the switch to 64-bit time_t on the FreeBSD/sparc64 port.
> I've also donated money to a few FreeBSD-related projects.
>
> I have dabbled with OpenBSD for almost as long, but I don't use it
> as much.  The main thing which pulled me into the FreeBSD camp over
> OpenBSD was that I am a big fan of SMP machines, and OpenBSD did not
> have the SMP support that I wanted (back when I was deciding on what
> to use the most).  I have bought all the CD's over the years, and a
> few T-Shirts, and have also contributed money to the project.  Most
> recently I contributed to buying a new Mac G5, to make it easier to
> work on improved SMP support for OpenBSD/ppc.
>
> Once every year or two I also buy a set of NetBSD CD's, and will
> install the i386 version on some machine.  That is usually just to
> test application-level changes.  I don't use NetBSD enough to be of
> any help when it comes to answering questions about it.
>
> Recently DragonflyBSD branched off from FreeBSD.  I am interested
> in seeing how Matt & company do with their goals.  I have tried to
> install Dragonfly a few times, but I happen to run into bad luck
> with those installs, so I don't actually have it running anywhere.
> I don't really have any more spare time anyway, so I don't know how
> much I could contribute to that project unless I dropped out of the
> FreeBSD project.  And right now I'm still interested in the multiple
> hardware platforms that FreeBSD runs on.  I like having i386, amd64,
> sparc64, and PowerPC.  In some sense I like the goals of NetBSD, to
> "run on everything", but I personally lose interest after the
>
> Going back a bit farther in my history, I was also the "NeXT
> support person" for NeXTSTEP and NeXTstations at RPI.  Well, RPI
> was also an 'academic hub reseller', which meant we also sold NeXT's
> to nearby colleges.  I still have both a greyscale NeXTstation and a
> color NeXTstation.  (For those who don't know, NeXTSTEP was built on
> top of a BSD unix).  I don't use them much though.  Someday I'll clean
> off the disks and given them to someone working in NetBSD land.
>
> I could go on, but this already makes me sound much more impressive
> than I really am.  I haven't *done* all that much, but I am interested
> in many open-source projects, and I like the BSD operating systems.
>
> I work in the computer center at RPI (a college in Troy NY).  The
> computer center does not do much with any of the BSD's, but recently
> we have been moving more services from AIX or Solaris to Linux boxes.
> The computer center is charged with "general computing support for
> all academic departments on campus".  RPI also has a computer-science
> department, with their own computing empire.  The computer science
> department does a lot with FreeBSD for various purposes.
>

Sounds great GAD. . . seems to be that you guys almost have the 
critical mass necessary for a meeting. . .

g