Keynote Address

The Evolution of Open Source Software

Eric Allman, CTO, Sendmail, Inc.



Open Source Software (software where the source code is available and users have the right to distribute modifications) has been around for a long time. But for a period it almost disappeared outside the "hacker" community, a victim of proprietary interests. It is now making a comeback; companies have started to realize that it can make good sense to give away source code for their products. This approach is especially popular for "mission critical" applications such as BIND (domain name system server), Apache (web server), and sendmail (electronic mail server) because of the high reliability and flexibility that the Open Source approach engenders.

This talk will give an overview of the history of source code availability, a discussion of how the rise of the Internet has changed market pressures, and an overview of how companies are adjusting their business models to fit into this new world. It ends with some predictions for types of software that will and will not fit comfortably into the Open Source model.

Eric Allman is the original author of sendmail. He was an early contributer to the UNIX effort at UC Berkeley, authoring syslog, tset, the -me troff macros, and trek. He was the chief programmer on the INGRES database management project and designed database user and application interfaces at Britton Lee (later Sharebase), and contributed to the Ring Array Processor project for neural-network-based speech recognition at the International Computer Science Institute. Eric is the CTO of Sendmail, Inc., and gives tutorials and presentations at USENIX conferences.

Wednesday, December 9, 1998   11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Security
Session Chair: Phil Cox, NTS, Inc.

TITAN
Dan Farmer, Earthlink Network; Brad Powell, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; and Matthew Archibald, KLA-Tencor

Infrastructure: A Prerequisite for Effective Security
Bill Fithen, Steve Kalinowski, Jeff Carpenter, and Jed Pickel, CERT Coordination Center

SSU: Extending SSH for Secure Root Administration
Christopher Thorpe, Yahoo!, Inc.

Got LDAP? Deploying and Using the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
Leif Hedstrom, Netscape Communications Corporation

Deploying and managing a directory server is a complicated task, requiring serious planning, a good architecture, and an idea of what to achieve. This presentation will introduce LDAP to the audience, give an outline of how to deploy LDAP, and present some possible solutions to deploying LDAP. We'll also talk about how to decide on software and hardware architecture, making sure you know how to select the appropriate tools for your environment.

Teaching System Administration
How does our profession develop new administrators? Are universities the answer? Extension programs? In-house training? This session will touch on the most important topics of educating system administrators. For the position paper presented, see:
http://www.peak.org/dl/sysadm/
usenix.position.paper.9812.html

Wednesday, December 9, 1998   2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Pushing Users and Scripts Around
Session Chair: Ozan S. Yigit, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

System Management With NetScript
Apratim Purakayastha and Ajay Mohindra, I.B.M. T. J. Watson Research Center

Accountworks: Users Create Accounts on SQL, Notes, NT and UNIX
Bob Arnold, Sybase, Inc.

Single Sign-On and the System Administrator
Michael Fleming Grubb and Rob Carter, Duke University

Zero to LISA in One Year
Brent Chapman, Covad Communications Company

How do you establish, provide, and scale system and network support for a company whose employee count doubles every four months, and whose site count doubles every 6 months? Come along for the ride with a hyper-growth startup as we explain how to cope with growing from 50 people at 2 sites in 1 region to 400 people at 8 sites in 6 regions in less than a year.

FREENIX Administration Issues
The proliferation of free UNIX-clones like Linux, FreeBSD, and NetBSD offers a new set of both technical and political challenges. This session discusses those challenges and more.

Wednesday, December 9, 1998   4:00 pm - 5:30 pm

Storage Performance
Session Chair: Marc Staveley, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Using Gigabit Ethernet to Backup Six Terabytes
W. Curtis Preston, Collective Technologies

Configuring Database Servers
Christopher R. Page, Millennium Pharmaceuticals

Practical Cryptography - Privacy for Business and Electronic Commerce
Frederick M Avolio, Security Consultant

This session will explain cryptographic basics, but concentrate on the tools and methods necessary for privacy for business (or personal) transactions and how they are and will be used in electronic commerce. It is not a technical presentation to discuss technical characteristics of the schemes. Rather, it is a general session to educate the system and MIS managers, who deploy encryption-enabled technology to support business on the Internet.

University Issues
Universities are a special environment with technical and political challenges all their own. This session will discuss some of those issues, such as networking, mail/dialup solutions, security, civil rights, and help desks.

LISA '98 Technical Program    [Wednesday, Dec. 9]    [Thursday, Dec. 10]    [Friday, Dec. 11]