Usenix, Dallas BOF Descriptions

[Mary Seabrook]

With appologies to anyone who was expecting this to
arrive before now, here is the current status of the 
BOFs for USENIX. Please do not hesitate to propose
one which is not listed here, there will be lots of 
opportunities to find me at the conference and schedule 
one then.


Mary



         Prescheduled BIRDS OF A FEATHER SESSION Details


This is a brief description of  all  of  the  currently
pre-scheduled  BOFs.  There  are  expected  to  be more
scheduled at the conference and these will be posted on
the BOF noticeboard in the Crystal Foyer.


Tuesday, January 22
8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Malachite Room (lobby level)   
The GNU Project (GNU's Not UNIX)   
Len Tower, Free Software Foundation

	This BOF is  to  discuss  the  current  technical
	status  if  the  GNU  Project,  to  give  Project
	volunteers a  chance  to  meet  those  they  have
	worked  with  over electronic mail, and to answer
	questions.  There will be  an  introduction  with
	the  status  of  the  GNU  Project, new programs,
	manuals, features, and future plans, with general
	information on how to contact the Project and get
	involved.


Salon I   
UNIX System V, Release 4   
Dewey Coffman, Dell Computer

        This  is  scheduled  to  be  a  discussion   with
        developers   and  interested  bystanders  of  the
        merits and pitfalls of porting applications  from
        Berkeley/SunOS,  Xenix,  or UNIX System V.3.2.  A
        sample of the topics includes: Development tools,
        C compilers, standards conformance, compatibility
        libraries, system  calls,  filesystem  types  and
        performance,  device  drivers/ioctls,  networking
        code, Motif/Xview/X11R4 availability,  GNU  tools
        under V.4.


Salon II   
OSF/1.1 and Internationalization   
Jan Smith, OSF

       OSF  has  shipped  Release  1.0  of   the   OSF/1
       Operating  System.   This  session  will  include
       presentation  of  OSF/1  Release  1.1  plans,   a
       summary  of  key  features in the next release of
       OSF/1,   OSF/1    National    Language    Support
       Architecture,  and  discussion of OSF/1's present
       and planned contents  and  functionality.   There
       will  be  several  key  OSF developers present to
       answer technical (and non-technical) questions.


Wednesday, January 23
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm


Salon I   
Project Athena: Network Services for Thousands of Workstations   
Henry Mensch, MIT

	MIT's  Project  Athena  has   developed   several
	services   to   make   large   (more   than  1000
	workstations)      heterogeneous      workstation
	environments   manageable   and   useful.   These
	services have been in use at MIT and  around  the
	world  for  several years, and the BOF is a forum
	for those who currently use  Athena  software  or
	are  looking  for a solution to the problems of a
	large workstation environment.


Salon II   
Chorus Operating System   
Lori Grob, Chorus systemes

        Chorus/Mix is a  modular Unix running on top of a
        small  real-time  nucleus.  The Unix subsystem is
        broken up into servers which run in a distributed
        fashion  and allow dynamic reconfiguration of the
        system.  There will be a  short  presentation  on
        Chorus and then an opportunity to ask questions.
        Presenters: Michel Gien, Lori Grob and Jim Lipkis


Salons IV & V     
UUNET         
Rick Adams, uunet

        This is the regular UUNET BOF, and  will  discuss
        various  matters  and issues related to uunet. It
        is expected to start at 6:30 pm, not at 6:00.


8:00 pm - 10:00 pm


Salon I   
NNTP Managers   
Eliot Lear, IntelliGenetics

        The outline for this BOF is proposed to  be:   An
        introduction  of  both the topic and speakers, An
        update on the current  status  including  Traffic
        levels,  volume  statistics, Number of newsgroups
        and space.  Then there will be  a  discussion  of
        improvements  including  NNTP  v2.0,  interaction
        with C News and other innovations.  There will be
        an   opportunity   to  voice  new  problems  with
        attention  to  the  following   areas,   External
        caches,  High  volume  groups and New hierarchies
        and then a time for any other issues.


Salon II   
POSIX Standards for Multi-Threading   
Atri Chatterjee, Sun Microsystems

	The  POSIX  1003.4a  (  "Threads  Extension   for
	Portable  Operating Systems", aka pthreads) draft
	has  been  sent  to  the  .4a   balloting   group
	recently.  It  is  intended that this BOF session
	serve as a  forum  for  transferring  information
	from  several  pthreads committee members present
	at the conference  to  other  less  involved  but
	interested   conference   attendees   by  way  of
	presentations/discussions on various  aspects  of
	the pthreads draft, especially those which impact
	UNIX evolution.
	Presenters: Atri Chatterjee, Devang Shar


Salons IV & V   
4.3BSD-Reno Update   
Kirk McKusick, CSRG

       A summary of the 4.3BSD-Reno release, the  latest
       release  from CSRG.  A discussion of the upcoming
       4.4BSD release and the announcement of an  update
       to  the Networking release of 1989 which does not
       require an AT&T license.
       Presenters: Mike  Karels,  Kirk  McKusick,  Keith
       Bostic


Salon VI   
Large Installation Systems Administration   
Bjorn Satdeva, /sys/admin inc.

	This will be  a  series  of  short  presentations
	followed by discussion time and covering a number
	of  topics  within  this   area.    Anyone   with
	additional  topics  to  add  to  the  BOF  should
	contact Bjorn at bjorn at sysadmin.com or in  person
	at the conference.


Salon VII   
ULTRIX   
Roger Masse, Digital Equipment Corp.

        Users or prospective users of  Digital  Equipment
        Corporation's   ULTRIX  product  are  invited  to
        attend an informal information exchange with  DEC
        people  representing  the ULTRIX Customer Support
        Center,   ULTRIX   Product   Management,   ULTRIX
        Technical Consultants, and ULTRIX Engineers.


Thursday, January 24
8:00 pm - 10:00 pm


Salon I   
UNIX Standards   
Dominic Dunlop, The Standard Answer Ltd.

         A discussion of current standardization  activity
         within  the UNIX community both in the US and the
         rest of the world.   Standards  under  discussion
         will include, POSIX, C, C++, and networking.
         Presenters: Dominic Dunlop, Jeff Haemer


Salon II   
AT&T 3B1/7300 Users Group   
David Brierley

        The BOF is intended as a gathering of owners  and
        users  of  the  AT&T  3B1/7300 computer.  A large
        group of us bought the  machines  and  depend  on
        each  other for support.  We have gotten together
        at the winter USENIX conference for the last  two
        years  and  would  like  to  continue  our annual
        gathering.  There is not currently a firm  agenda
        for  the  BOF  but there will be a group of users
        talking about their latest hardware and  software
        hacks.

-- 
mary at unisoft.com
+1 415 420 6410 x 124