Fwd: [Wind] Fw: Linux/Unix openings - searching for candidates!

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich B)]

> No, there are a number of 10+ year Linux programmers around.  Alan
> Cox, Ted T'so, and a few others.  Linux 1.0 was released about 9 years
> ago, so there WERE people (other than Linus) working on it back then.
>
> > Reminds me of the ad for a 5 year Java programmer at a time when the
> > only qualifying people would be members of Gosling's design team.

> We can add a few local people.
> Jim Paradis - ported Linux to the Digital Alpha (the 32 bit port). Linux
> did the 64 bit port which showed up a few months later.
> Jay Estabrook who has been (and still is) working with the Alpha version
> for about as long as Jim.

Well I never did kernel hacking but for me Linux goes back to the 6th
of December 1992 (plus or minus a few days).  The first thing it made
me do was head to Lechmere (on 12/20) to buy a 14.4K Zoom modem so I
could download stuff.  And I don't recall any Slackware distro in
those early months; you downloaded off prep.ai.mit.edu and/or
tsx-11.mit.edu and compiled it all yourself, starting with the
boot/root disks and a gcc binary.  The next thing I needed was a 1Gb
drive to replace my old 100Mb drive; I think I bought it for $400.
Today you can go to Microcenter and buy an 80Gb unit for $99.

The one thing I did publish for public consumption was a March 1993 port of
IDA sendmail, which was useful for a year or so until the official UCB
sendmail got the m4/IDA extensions folded in, along with better
handling of UUCP domain addressing.  (An earlier publishing effort,
SOSS, resulted in so much I-need-help tech support email that I wound
up deciding not to continue publishing free software.  I point that
out so y'all are motivated to send thank-you-so-much email to anyone
else who is willing to attach their name to anything free.)

I'll attach below an item posted in March 1993 regarding how Linux could
be used to build Internet infrastructure.  Tenth anniversary of that item,
in reponse to a posting on ne.general, is coming up!

-rich

>From richb Tue Mar 16 21:04:55 1993
Subject: New England regional freenet
To: freenet
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1993 21:04:55 -0500 (EST)
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL17]

I got a few responses to my posting about setting up a free-access network,
so maybe I should try to get people in touch.  To that end I've started
keeping a mailing list, freenet at rkbhome.jti.com, of people who have shown
interest.

The essence of my idea is that (a) it's real tough to find UUCP feeds
anywhere anymore--colleges are all on Internet and the admins are
uninterested in UUCP and don't have spare time anyway, and (b) modems and
PCs have gotten so darned cheap that just about anyone can run a USENET
site these days.

My home PC is a 486 running software anyone can have for free, in fact a
rather sophisticated set of Unix freeware on top of the Linux kernel.  It's
been running without a crash since early December.  The main archive site
is right here in New England, on tsx-11.mit.edu.  The initial dialup line
is a Zoom 14.4K modem bought at Lechmere for a mere $254.99.  Thus the
entry price to USENET is literally under $1000 worth of equipment (I went
whole-hog and got a big disk, lots of RAM, etc, but starving-students on
a budget don't need all that).  The email software, as you can see, is quite
capable of routing Internet-style addresses over UUCP links.

As for SLIP, once enough people got involved we could collectively go out
and buy Internet connectivity, dividing up the cost so as to make it really
inexpensive (possibly free).  If we don't like New England service providers,
which are generally quite good but on the expensive side, it's actually
not costly to hook up a point-to-point link to somewhere else in the
nation.  Just about every PC, Mac, and Unix environment comes with SLIP--for
free.

Thus the project is less a technical one than an organizational one.  We
need to identify resources, make a plan, promote the ideas, and teach people
how to take advantage of the system.  I have a personal interest in getting
all those crunchy-granola do-good organizations operating on a shoestring
hooked together via email and netnews.  Most of them have little computer-
savvy skills, but showing them the power of this system and its ability to
get a message out to a lot of people would quickly overcome such
reluctance.

I can easily collect a set of useful networking freeware for each of
the major platforms (DOS, Windows, Mac, Linux) and make it available
via Internet and dialup.  I can also serve as a UUCP hub and domain
server for a new domain (something.org).  (I'm not planning to offer
public-access shell sessions; they eat up too much modem time--there
are other people who like to run BBS's, and this freenet would work
well to link them.)

I'd like to hear what other resources could be made available for a project
like this.

Thanks for your mail!
-rich