[lug] Today at 4pm: UNIX API by Marc Rochkind - FRUUG meeting

[Neal McBurnett]

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June 2003 Newsletter of the Front Range UNIX Users Group
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Cndnsd Vrsn: 4 PM Thursday 6/19 ACS Room 123 - UNIX APIs
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Contents:

   * This Month's Meeting
   * About the Speaker
   * Meeting Location
   * Our Last Meeting
   * Future Meetings
   * FRUUG Giveaways
   * Library Notes
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What is UNIX, Anyway?

The next meeting of the Front Range UNIX Users Group (FRUUG) will be held at
4:00 PM on Thursday, June 19.  Marc Rochkind has been studying the history
and current state of the UNIX API in excruciating depth, and has been
working on what promises to be another best-selling book on the topic.

"UNIX is a general-purpose, multi-user, interactive operating system for the
larger Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11 and the Interdata 8/32 computers,"
according to the first sentence of the seminal Bell Labs Technical Journal
article on the topic published in 1978.  Or it may be a trademark for anything
that implements the 1117 functions defined in the Single UNIX Specification,
even if the system is IBM OS/390 or Microsoft Windows. Or maybe it's a name
for a community of Windows haters.

Linux, which contains no AT&T code (well, maybe :-) and doesn't qualify for
the trademark, is In, or maybe Out.  FreeBSD, which shares both characteris-
tics, is definitely In.  OS/390 and Windows can use the UNIX trademark all
they want, but they're definitely Out.

What happened?  The 72 system calls of the 7th Edition have grown now to over
500.  Instead of small, elegant, and minimalist, it's now bloated, redundant,
inconsistent, and, in some cases, defective.  Today's system-call interface
is a terrible mess, but the systems underneath are reliable, efficient, and
cheap, and they run much of the world; the 7th edition was useful only for
research.  Is programming-interface design even important?  Or is UNIX an
exception to the rule?  Is a chaotic programming model a requirement for
success?

Marc's talk will trace what's happened, and try even to explain why it
happened.  Marc plans to blame Ritchie, Thompson, AT&T, Sun, OSF, X/Open,
IEEE, Linus Torvalds, FRUUG, himself, and anyone else he has time for.  (Bill
Gates gets off, though.)  Marc's talk will also explain what he had to do to
his 19-year-old book, Advanced UNIX Programming, to bring it up to date.
(Hint: he decided what to put in the 1st Edition by scribbling on a piece of
scratch paper; for the 2nd he used a relational database.)

About the Speaker

Marc Rochkind has his hands in so many interesting projects that we really
can't keep track of all his activities.  Fortunately, he surfaces on a
regular basis to come tell FRUUG what he's been up to, and this is one of
those special months.  Marc is best known in Unix circles for the development
of the Source Code Control System, which he worked on more than a
quarter-century ago at Bell Labs, and the book "Advanced Unix Programming."
He was also the founder and CEO of Boulder's XVT Software Inc., which
developed and marketed a toolkit for writing portable GUI applications.
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Meeting Location

This meeting will be in room 123 of the CU Academic Computing Center building
at Arapahoe and Marine Streets in Boulder.  Marine St intersects Arapahoe at
38th St; the Computing Center is on the southwest corner.

        [See <http://www.fruug.org/announcement/index.html> for map]
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Our Last Meeting

Sorry about this, folks, we've had two meetings this spring that were cancelled
due to weather and changing travel plans of the speaker.  We still hope to have
our meeting on Monitoring and Managing Applications with JMX, and also our
meeting on IP-based Storage Area Networks, or iSCSI, when we can re-schedule
the speakers.

Announcements, presentation slides, and writeups for past meetings are be
available in the FRUUG Meeting Archive: www.fruug.org/mtgarchive/index.html.
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Future Meetings

Next month (tentatively July 16) we're going to have a meeting to inform our
members about the City of Boulder's new initiative to tax Internet access,
and how it may affect you.

The City of Boulder has recently presented the Colorado Internet Cooperative
with a bill of almost $171,000 for nine years of back taxes on Internet
access services.  The City claims that the Coop must pay tax not only on the
fiber and copper that connects them to the Internet (these were already
paid), but also on the "taxable service" provided in the form of bandwidth
and circuit capacity.  Any business with Internet access would be liable for
this tax, though the City has said it does not apply to individuals.

The Coop claims that this tax is superceded by both state and federal laws
that prohibit new taxes on Internet access, and most recently Douglas Bruce,
author of the TABOR amendment to the state constitution, has chimed in to
say that his amendment makes it illegal to change taxation policy to begin
taxing something that in the past has not been taxed.  The City claims that
it has been collecting this tax for some time, however other local ISPs
dispute that claim.

Some observers think that even if the tax is legal, it just hurts local
businesses, incenting them to move outside the city or face higher costs
than their competition.

A timeline of this issue and a collection of articles from Boulder's Daily
Camera, the Rocky Mountain News, and the Denver Post are posted on their
site at: www.coop.net/tax.  The City of Boulder's Sales and Use Tax code is
at www.ci.boulder.co.us/cao/brc/3-2.html.
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FRUUG Giveaways

Steve Gaede realized that the FRUUG Library Merit Badge program isn't as
complicated as it seems.  Learn about it and sign up for give-away books by
consulting the FRUUG Library page on our Web site.  FRUUG merit badge holders
are eligible for our frequent book give-aways, and all you have to do for a
lifetime membership is to review any book from the FRUUG library and send
the review to gaede at fruug.org.

This month we have two books from Addison Wesley to give away:

   * Beyond Software Architecture, Creating and Sustaining Winning Solutions
   * Software Architecture in Practice, Second Edition

If you're a FRUUG Library Merit Badge holder and would like one of the
books, please sign up at www.fruug.org/library/giveaway.html

Finally, we once again have a Gift Certificate to SoftPro Books to give away
to a FRUUG member at the meeting.
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FRUUG Library Notes

We welcome Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference (PTR), part of
Addison-Wesley, to our FRUUG Library Program!  Prentice Hall PTR publishes lots
of useful UNIX and open system-related works, and has contributed several give-
away books for our future meetings.  As you'll see from the list below,
Prentice Hall PTR has contributed quite a set of security-related books to the
library this month.

Because it's been a while since our last actual meeting, we have a large
number of new books this month.  We have extra copies of the books marked
with an asterisk that will be made available as future give-away copies for
FRUUG Library Merit Badge Holders.

   * Apache, the Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition, from O'Reilly.
   * Beyond Software Architecture, from Addison-Wesley
   * Code Reading, the Open Source Perspective, from Addison-Wesley
   * Firewalls and Internet Security, Second Edition, from Addison-Wesley
   * Intrusion Detection with Snort,* from Prentice Hall PTR
   * Linux Server Hacks, 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools, from
     O'Reilly.
   * Linux on the Mainframe,* from Prentice Hall PTR
   * Inside Network Perimeter Security, from New Riders
   * Inside the Security Mind,* Making the Tough Decisions, from Prentice
     Hall PTR
   * PHP Cookbook, from O'Reilly.
   * MacOS X for Java Geeks, from O'Reilly.
   * Personal Firewalls for Administrators and Remote Users,* from Prentice
     Hall PTR
   * Practical Unix & Internet Security, from O'Reilly.
   * The Practice of Network Security,* from Prentice Hall PTR
   * Sendmail, Third Edition, from O'Reilly.
   * Software Fortresses,* Modeling Enterprise Architectures, from
     Addison-Wesley
   * Software Architecture in Practice,* Second Edition, from Addison-Wesley
   * The UNIX CD Bookshelf, from O'Reilly.
   * Using Samba, from O'Reilly.

You may check out books using your business card as your library card; you
must be on the membership list to check books out.  Books are due at the
meeting following the one in which they are checked out.

Remember that your FRUUG membership entitles you to discounts on your book
orders from both New Riders Publishing and O'Reilly & Associates; refer to
the FRUUG Web site for details.

The New Riders discount program has changed; pick up a discount coupon with
our secret password at the meeting.
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FRUUG CONTACTS

The FRUUG "Executive Committee" is currently:
  * Tom Cargill (cargill, 303 499-5940), .profile Consulting
  * Mark Carlson (mac, 303 448-0048), Sun Microsystems
  * Barb Dijker (barb, 303 938-0188), Netrack
  * Dick Dunn (rcd), Minolta-QMS Inc.
  * Steve Gaede (gaede, 303 444-9114), Lone Eagle Systems, Inc
  * Carol Meier (meier, 303 499-5940), .profile Consulting
  * Neal McBurnett (neal), Internet2
  * Bill Meine (wmeine)
  * Joe VanAndel (vanandel, 303 497-2071), NCAR
  * Wally Wedel (wwedel, 303 272-5019), Sun Microsystems
For email, use the names in parens, in the domain fruug.org.

For FRUUG membership information, more contact information, and an ASCII copy
of the most recent meeting announcement, send mail to fruug-info at fruug.org
and you'll receive an automatic reply...or point your WWW browser to
http://www.fruug.org

For more FRUUG information, changes, additions, or deletions from the
electronic or US Mail mailing list, please send your request to
fruug-request at fruug.org.

If there are comments you'd like to send to the entire executive committee, you
can reach us with the address: fruug at fruug.org.

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