Systems Notebook: Socially Distant Projects

;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 don’t know about the rest of you, but for me the last several months have been really weird. At the start of March, my daily routine stopped being one that involved getting up, riding my bike to my office, talking to my coworkers, and hopefully getting some technical work done. Instead, I started walking into my garage every morning, sitting at my workbench-become-desk, and interacting with all of my coworkers via WebEx, Skype, BlueJeans, Zoom, and just about any other online meeting package that’s ever been invented. While being socially distant has resulted in fewer interruptions, and I feel like I have gotten a lot more done each day, it’s also made it clear that projects frequently require socialization to make progress. It turns out that most technical projects benefit from some level of social closeness.

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