It's Not Magic

Reflections on a career in open tech

Bart Massey
2011/11/29

How did we get where we are in computing?

• Age of discovery (1800-1950): Babbage, Church, Turing
• Age of big iron (1950-1970): IBM, the Seven Dwarves
• Age of minicomputers (1970-1980): DEC, Sun
• Modem Age (1980-1995)
• Age of microprocessors (1975-1985): Intel, Motorola
• Age of gray boxes (1985-1995): Intel, Microsoft
• Internet Age (1995-)
• Mobile Age (2000-)

Where does open source fit in?

• Originally, SW was cooperative / "lab"
• Big iron, minis commercialized SW production
• UNIX was something new (c.f. Multics)
  • Cross-platform
  • University licensing
• BSD UNIX changed everything
• X / GNU

Attack of the killer micros

"Nothing can withstand...the attack of the killer micros!" --Eugene Brooks

• XFree86 / Linux
• Me: On the Oregon Coast in late 1970s
  • CP/M, TRS-80
  • Age of BASIC (1970-1980); Age of Pascal (1975-1985)
  • Employment was easy
  • PD job
  • Fishing boats accounting

The convergence

• HW-based -- micros powerful enough to replace minis and most mainframes
• People-based
  • Hobbyists, tinkerers and academics go mainstream
  • General public gets computers
• Me: Freshman year at Oregon State
  • Get newfangled IBM PC
  • Started to seriously write hobby SW: Graphics package
  • Employment was easy
  • ME prof doing 6502 robotics
  • Sociology Dept doing automated testing
• Me: Reed College
  • Get on PDP-11 / VAX 785 / Apple Lisa
  • Get newfangled Apple Macintosh
  • Seriously wrote hobby SW
  • PC terminal emulator
  • Various projects with Keith Packard: Kalypso, ic
  • Employment was easy
  • Sysadmin / AD Academic Computing
  • File transfer SW for Mac terminal emulator
  • Tektronix PC-DOS filesystem for 6200 "Stratos"

Ubiquity

• Computers get cheap / fast / everywhere
• Employment was easy
  • CS Instructor at PSU
    • Taught Pascal
    • Helped set up CAT
  • Tek GTD -- "Lion" workstation
  • Tek TVMS
    • Audio DSP on Motorola 56K
    • Open source / OS / networking
    • Sysadmin

Sophistication

• New developments in fundamental algorithms
• Birth and crash of some fundamental CS: Logic Programming, Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Wave of parallelism
• Me: UO MS/PhD program
  • Studied CLP with Evan Tick on Sequent SMP
  • Studied AI with Steve Fickas, then CIRL
    • State-Space Search in planning and scheduling
    • Adversary search
    • Why does this stuff matter?
  • Employment was easy
    • TA / RA
    • Sysadmin
    • Contract work
• A bunch of hobby and open source work

Postmodern Computing

• Too much stuff to bullet-point
• Web, mobile
• Another wave of parallelism
• Me: PSU CS Prof
  • Adversary search
  • Rockets / PSAS
  • Broader AI
  • HW / SW open tech work
  • Contractor
    • Tech / tech mgmt
    • Legal expert
  • Entrepreneur
    • NASA SBIR
    • SupIR
    • Forensitech

Conclusions

• Would I do this all again? Yes! It has been awesome
• Could you do it today? Yes! It's even easier
  • Community
  • Web / Internet
  • Cheap HW / SW / auxilliary equipment
  • Lots of training / learning opportunities
• "But everyone has such a headstart on me"
  • Who cares? You think I knew anything in 4th grade?
  • The trick is to find a curve

"And now for something completely different"

• Open source / open tech
  • What's it all about? People making things
  • Languages and systems
  • Linux: What is it?
  • Kernel
  • OS
  • Ecosystem
  • Open source / open tech everywhere

The power of "giving stuff away"

• SW / designs are cool because they are infinitely copyable for free
• The computing world and world in general benefit
  • Less-well-off in US
  • Internationally
  • Thinking locally
• You get to play with (mostly) cool people
  • Sure, Asperger's and other personality disorders
  • But mostly just folks
  • Portland is especially cool
• You get to learn from those around you
  • Internet = world's biggest shared workspace
  • Plenty of face-to-face
  • My closest friends are here with me