Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Swiss Open Systems Group

Few people know that I collect and repair
mechanical antique clocks. I prefer a pendulum clock with either
weights or springs; balance wheels and quartz turn me off. So last
year, when I was able to visit Basel, Switzerland to speak at a
conference named Orbit, I took the time to visit the Black Forest
of Germany, home of the cuckoo clock, with my old friend, Herald
von Fellen.Unfortunately I was not in the proper clock-buying mood, and
when I saw two perfect clocks for me, I did not buy them. And they
sat there for a year in my mind.Soon afterwards Harald contacted me again and asked if I
would speak at the twentieth anniversary of the
Swiss Open Systems
Group, formerly the Swiss UNIX Group in Zurich. I
accepted.This speech would prove to be different from most of my other
talks, as it would delve backward into time to talk about some of
the early machines I programmed, then lead forward into the future.
It was also the first time I had ever been to Zurich.Zurich is an interesting place. A center for banking and
industry, it also offers nightlife, architecture and cultural
venues. Situated beside a large lake, with a river running through
the center of town, Zurich offers plenty of venues for eating and
for drinking good beer and wine. The city is so clean and the air
is so fresh that people continually drink out of the fountains that
exist throughout the city--bottled water sells slowly there. It
also has several universities, with all of the energy and
enthusiasm that university students possess.
Fresh Water Flows Everywhere
I was pleased to visit two of these fine institutions during
my visit. One was the Federal Institute of Technology, where
Niklaus Wirth worked before he retired and where Ueli Maurer still
works. The other was the University of Applied Sciences of
Rapperswil, which is about thirty kilometers by train from Zurich,
with a beautiful campus directly on the same lake. To both of these
universities I gave a talk about the value of using Open Source in
education, not only for the education of computer science but for
education in other fields.
Friendly Students
It has long been my conviction that some universities are
sliding into the teaching of programs and processes rather than the
more fundamental elements, such as how to learn from books, how to
recognize problems, how to research these problems and how then
come up with a solution. Part of the modern educational process for
all students has to be learning what the computer generally can and
cannot do for them and how to convey their needs to the person who
can help them solve their programming problem, the computer science
major.This is not to say that each biology student should be able
to write a complex computer program, but each should have enough
computer knowledge to be able to know what is possible to help them
solve their problems.Likewise missing from some computer science programs is the
education of the computer science student in how to draw out and
define the needs of other disciplines when writing programs. A good
computer scientist should be able to work with a biologist, a
chemist, a civil engineer or any other discipline to extract what
each needs from a program, then develop that program.I feel that Open Source programming is a major factor in
educating students in how to do these tasks. To that end, I would
like to see more coursework that brings together computer science
students and students in different disciplines. As projects, they
could work together to develop Open Source programs that illustrate
points in those other disciplines.I also feel that Open Source is the only legitimate way of
doing research at a publicly funded university. In a lot of ways
this applies to privately funded universities, too. In the end, the
public always pays for universities' research. By using Open Source
for software projects, they will not have to pay for it twice (or
three times, or four times).I received a warm welcome from both universities, and the
only bad part of the visits is there wasn't enough time after the
Rapperswil talk for beer and pizza by the lakeside. However, at the
Federal Institute of Technology we made up for that.
A Fine Glass of Beer
I also spoke at a major bank in Zurich that was beginning to
use Linux. I do not know if they want me to name the bank, but I
was told that they had a very large room under the bank that stores
a lot of gold. I asked for a small sample, but they told me the
vault was closed. Here, my talk was different because I was
addressing the needs of business rather than education.The following day was the celebration of /ch/open. Since it
was in the evening, Roberto Nibali, one of the core developers of
the Linux Virtual
Server project was kind enough to take me sightseeing. We
had a leisurely boat ride on the lake, which turned out to be free
since we both had "transportation" tickets, and the boat was
actually part of the Zurich ferry service. While on board we had a
few beers.
A Bit of Beer on Board the Boat
Then we went to a small Renaissance faire that depicted a
marketplace of the Renaissance. There were jesters, magicians,
jugglers, sword fighters and a wide variety of food and trinkets to
purchase. I bought three small toy mice to give to my godchildren
when I see them next. We also met two Linux hackers who had heard
my talk at the university the day before. They told me that a lot
of Linux people participated in the Renaissance faires, and it did
seem like fun.
Two Renaissance Linux Hackers
By that time we were headed towards the party. Marco
Demarmels, who had helped me make my travel arrangements and was
kind enough to ferry me around to all of my appointments, picked us
up once again and took us to the former monastery(!) that now
houses an educational and conference center.First we had a bit of wine. The real problem with the area
around Germany and Switzerland is that you cannot decide between
really good beer and really good wine. I was lucky in that I did
not have to decide this time, they just kept refilling the wine
glass. After a while I had to switch to orange juice, since I was
expected to give my talk.
The Former Monastery with Wine Dispensary
But before I gave my talk, a local "surprise" speaker, Snoopy
of Datadragons.de gave a light and funny talk (it must have been
funny, since people laughed) in German. He offered to give it in
English, but I know how sometimes humor in one's own language does
not translate well, so I encouraged him to give it in German. It
turns out that I had met Snoopy once or twice before at
LISA conferences. Snoopy
is relatively easy to recognize, if for no other reason than that
he has blue hair.
Snoopy Giving His (Obviously) Funny Talk
Then it was my turn to speak, and in the discussion of the
history of UNIX, I went all the way back to the EDSAC computer,
which had a mercury tube memory and was constructed in Cambridge by
my friend Maurice Wilkes and his team. I then went on to talk about
how computers had changed over time, becoming faster and better,
but always having the operating system tailored to the hardware,
never to the method of programming--until Ken Thompson wrote
UNIX.I went through the first few years of UNIX, showing how there
was an iterative effort to make UNIX portable and what that meant
to the operating system. Then I showed how the UNIX wars pulled
things apart, and how the BSD, GNU and Linux projects pulled it
together again. Finally I asked the people in the room to give
themselves a pat on the back for having helped to make this all
possible over the years.After the talks, we had a great meal, and everyone received a
/ch/open T-shirt. I received a Swiss military pocket knife, which
really is a handy tool for working with computer hardware. It had
everything you need to pull your PC apart and, well, never mind. In
a drawing for prizes, a member who was attending for the first time
won the grand prize of an entire PC!
The Winner of the Grand Prize
We started with so many appetizers that for a while I thought
it was the whole meal, but then they brought on the second and
third courses and desert. The beer flowed well (I had switched from
wine by then) and everyone had a good time.The Last DayI had wanted one last day to right a wrong that happened the
year before. Roberto Nibali and I met at the rental car counter in
the Zurich airport and drove to Triberg, Germany, deep in the Black
Forest. There, in the same building that houses the world's largest
cuckoo clock, were the two clocks I had not purchased the year
before. This time I did not fail in my duty, and the two clocks are
now being shipped my way. Since we arrived late in the day in
Triberg, we decided to stay the night locally, which of course led
to a beer garden and...
Yes, that is the pendulum of the cuckoo clock behind Roberto, who
is wearing his /ch/open T-shirt.
Jon maddog Hall is executive
director of Linux International.

email: maddog@li.org