iVoyeur: Nagios XI

;login: Enters a New Phase of Its Evolution

For over 20 years, ;login: has been a print magazine with a digital version; in the two decades previous, it was USENIX’s newsletter, UNIX News. Since its inception 45 years ago, it has served as a medium through which the USENIX community learns about useful tools, research, and events from one another. Beginning in 2021, ;login: will no longer be the formally published print magazine as we’ve known it most recently, but rather reimagined as a digital publication with increased opportunities for interactivity among authors and readers.

Since USENIX became an open access publisher of papers in 2008, ;login: has remained our only content behind a membership paywall. In keeping with our commitment to open access, all ;login: content will be open to everyone when we make this change. However, only USENIX members at the sustainer level or higher, as well as student members, will have exclusive access to the interactivity options. Rik Farrow, the current editor of the magazine, will continue to provide leadership for the overall content offered in ;login:, which will be released via our website on a regular basis throughout the year.

As we plan to launch this new format, we are forming an editorial committee of volunteers from throughout the USENIX community to curate content, meaning that this will be a formally peer-reviewed publication. This new model will increase opportunities for the community to contribute to ;login: and engage with its content. In addition to written articles, we are open to other ideas of what you might want to experience.

I once had an excellent conversation with Puppet [1] creator Luke Kanies. Well, I think it was excellent but I don’t remember exactly. It was LISA ’07, I believe, and although I recall talking at length, all that remains in my memory is a vague notion that it was an excellent conversation, along with exactly two details. The first thing I remember is that I embarrassed myself in a particularly epic way. The topic was configuration management engines, and I think I made a quip about not knowing what I’d rather do less, write server configuration in XML or learn Ruby.

Luke, who had just wandered up, told me I should totally learn Ruby, because it was awesome. I responded that I’d recently read a series of articles about Ruby in ;login: magazine [2], and although the author seemed to know what he was talking about, he hadn’t managed to inspire in me a desire to run out and learn yet another OOP scripting language.

Luke, who had written those articles, apologized for not inspiring me.

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iVoyeur: Nagios XI

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