USENIX BOARD OF DIRECTORS Years and Years Ago Communicate directly with the USENIX Board of Directors by Peter H. Salus writing to [email protected]. [email protected] 2005!

PRESIDENT Think about it! USENIX Michael B. Jones, Fifty years ago, 1955, IBM encour- [email protected] aged the first meeting of “users”— notes operators of the new 704—I guess, the first LISA. Also in 1955, VICE PRESIDENT USENIX MEMBER BENEFITS AT&T/ submitted Members of the USENIX Associa- Clem Cole, to the consent decree that, among tion receive the following benefits: [email protected] other things, barred them from entering any business other than FREE SUBSCRIPTION to ;login:, the Associ- telephony or telegraphy (when was ation’s magazine, published six times SECRETARY the last time you sent or received a a year, featuring technical articles, Alva Couch, system administration articles, tips telegram?). [email protected] and techniques, practical columns on A decade later, 1965. The Multics such topics as security, Perl, Java, and project has gotten underway. CTSS operating systems, book reviews, and TREASURER and DTS on the DEC-10 are the big summaries of sessions at USENIX thing. IBM is just coming out with conferences. Theodore Ts’o, [email protected] the 360. ACCESS TO ;LOGIN: online from October 1975! Big time. The Labs have 1997 to this month: www.usenix.org/publications/login/. DIRECTORS come out with V6. The “ Users’ Group” (linear parent of ACCESS TO PAPERS from USENIX confer- Matt Blaze, USENIX) has met (nearly two ences online: [email protected] dozen in attendance!) and is brac- www.usenix.org/publications/ Jon “maddog” Hall, ing itself for another—publi- library/proceedings/ [email protected] cized—meeting to be held 18 June. THE RIGHT TO VOTE on matters affecting Geoff Halprin, (Attendance bounded to 40.) It the Association, its bylaws, and elec- [email protected] was the beginning of multiple tion of its directors and officers. meetings, too. Marshall Kirk McKusick, DISCOUNTS on registration fees for all [email protected] In October, Mel Ferentz chaired a USENIX conferences. meeting at CUNY, and Belton Allen DISCOUNTS on the purchase of proceed- chaired one four days later at the ings and CD-ROMs from USENIX EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR NPG in Monterey. conferences. Ellie Young, The year 1976 saw three meetings, SPECIAL DISCOUNTS on a variety of prod- [email protected] too: one in Berkeley in February ucts, books, software, and periodi- chaired by Bob Fabry; two at Har- cals. For details, see vard—April and October—both www.usenix.org/membership chaired by Lew Law. /specialdisc.html. The second of these was the first FOR MORE INFORMATION regarding meeting to top 100 attendees, but membership or benefits, please see the next May, Steve Holmgren www.usenix.org/membership/ or contact offi[email protected]. chaired the first Midwest meeting Phone: 510-528-8649 at UIUC and eclipsed that with 250 in attendance. In September, Oliver Whitby and John Bass ran a West Coast meet- ing at SRI with about 100 atten- dees.

54 ;LO GIN: V OL. 30, NO. 2 The organization was about to Thirtieth Anniversary, USENIX held a POSIX workshop become USENIX. The publication in 1987. USENIX Association was about to become ;login:. And: An informal gathering of under Peter H. Salus 1st Graphics Workshop, 1985 two dozen people in May 1974 [email protected] had turned into a semiannual 1st C++ Workshop, 1987 event of major proportions. June 18, 1975. CUNY in Manhat- 1st Supercomputing Conference, [Blatant advertisement: Tom tan. Mel Ferentz runs the first 1987 Limoncelli and I have edited an USENIX conference. Of course, it 1st Security Workshop, 1988 anthology of all the April Fool’s wasn’t called USENIX then, it was a UNIX users’ group, until the 1st Mobile Computing Workshop, Day RFCs. No Starch Press, out in 1993 July.] lawyers at AT&T got tough about that (tm). And it wasn’t the first 1st OSDI, 1996 meeting, either, as Lou Katz had 1st Electronic Commerce Work- Short Topics Booklets run a small meeting in a confer- shop, 1998 ence room at Columbia in May 1st Embedded Systems Workshop, Rik Farrow, Short Topics Editor 1974. 1999 [email protected] But there were “about 40 people SAGE became a Special Technical The Short Topics in System from 20 institutions” at the 1975 Group of USENIX in 1992. Administration series of booklets meeting. are intended to fill a void in the Look around at any USENIX con- USENIX has brought together the current information structure, pre- ference, workshop, symposium. core of the Linux Kernel develop- senting topics in a thorough, refer- There’ll be many times 40 folks. ment team in the Linux Kernel eed fashion but staying small and Yes, it has been 30 years, but the Developers Summit, held annually flexible enough to grow with the growth has come because USENIX since 2001. community. has been where it’s happening. USENIX is where Ken Thompson Number 12 in the series, Building And still is. spoke in 1974; where Steve Jobs a Logging Infrastructure, by Abe USENIX is where Kirk McKusick spoke in 1987; where Stu Feldman Singer and Tina Bird, appeared talked about memory manage- lectured us on architecture; where first at LISA ’04. As of March 1, a ment. we learned how Google works. new booklet, A Sysadmins’ Guide to USENIX is where Tom Ferrin told Oh, yeah. And how to fix your Oracle, by Ben Rockwood, was us how to “cut this foil etch” and PDP-11 with this 98-cent resistor. beginning a technical review, and “insert this jumper wire.” In 1966 BU (Before UNIX), it should be in production early Crispian St. Peters sang, “Follow this summer. A contract has gone USENIX is where we first heard me, I’m the Pied Piper . . .” It made out to Xev Gittler and William about Tcl and OAK (= Java) and it to #4 on Billboard’s list. Charles for a booklet with the Perl and GNOME. working title Being Root, providing USENIX is where, in 1980 in But if you follow USENIX, you’ll guidelines for working as the root Boulder, Colorado, Jim Ellis really know where it’s at. user, focusing on best practices, announced . tools, and ethics. USENIX is where UUNET began. USENIX welcomes suggestions for USENIX is where portability has topics, proposals for booklets, and been supported for 30 years. technical reviewers. Interested? Please send email to USENIX has been sponsoring [email protected]. redistributable software since 1976. For the list of booklets, see www.usenix.org/publications/. USENIX held its first security workshop in 1988.

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