Conference on Freely Redistributable Software

Sponsored by the Free Software Foundation

Over the past 15 years freely redistributable software
with accessible code has become ubiquitous.  GNU 
Emacs is the most popular Unix editor in the world;
Linux may well be the most exciting Unix-compatible 
kernel;  Perl has become indispensable to 
system administrators;  Expect automates and controls
interactive programs.

Join us for a unique conference that will bring together 
implementors of different types of freely redistributable 
software as well as the publishers of the operating 
systems and the tools and applications.

Systems and kernels involved will be the Gnu/Hurd, Linux, 
NetBSD, 386/BSD, and FreeBSD; tools and applications 
include Bison, Flex, Expect, Emacs, PERL, and GCC.

This is the first conference dedicated to bringing together all 
those involved in freely redistributable software.

Join us for this and much, much more!

Cambridge Center Marriott 
Friday, February 2 through Monday, February 5, 1996

Full Conference Schedule

Friday, February 2, 1996
	Registration 6-10pm
	Reception 7-9pm

Saturday, February 3, 1996
	Registration 8am - 6pm
	Tutorials 9am - 5pm
		S1: Linux: An Open System for Everyone
		           (am) - Phil Hughes
		S2: Installing and Running Linux (pm)
			   Phil Hughes
		S3: Expect (full day) - Don Libes
		S4: C News (am) - Henry Spencer & Geoff Collyer
		S5: Advanced editing with Emacs (pm)
		           Richard M. Stallman
	[box lunch is included with tutorial registration]
	BoFs 7pm - 10pm

Sunday, February 4, 1996
	Registration 8am - 6pm

	9-10am: Keynote: Linus Torvalds, introduced by Phil Hughes

	10:30am: Session I - Chris Demetriou, chair

		Automated Management of an Heterogeneous
		Distributed Production Environment -
		Ph. Defert et al., CERN

		Freely Redistributable Software across the 
		Internet - Neil Smith, University of Kent

		Linux for Research and Teaching of 
		Operating Systems - Victor Yodaiken, New Mexico
		Institute of Mining and Technology

	1:30pm: Session II - Don Libes, Session Chair

		Freely Redistributable Instead of Commercial
		Software -- Yugoslav Experience - Radivoje
		Zonjic, University of Belgrade

		Linux on the OSF Mach3 micro-kernel -
		Francois Barbou des Places, OSF/Grenoble

		Internationalization in the GNU Project -
		Ulrich Drepper, University of Karlsruhe

		Free Software vs. the Medical Challenges 
		of the 1990's - Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris
		Cancer Center

	3:30pm: Session III 

		The RPM Packaging System - Marc Ewing & 
		Erik Troan, Red Hat Software

		Why Should the Value-Added Reseller care about 
		Free Software? - Rick R. Castrapel & Frank E. Barone

		Coordinating Joint Cost/No-cost Rights for 
		Software Developed with SBIR Funding -
		Philip A. Wilsey & Dale E. Martin,
		University of Cincinnati

		Licensing Alternatives for Freely 
		Redistributable Software - L. Peter Deutsch,
		Aladdin Enterprises

	5:15pm: Keynote:  Richard M. Stallman, introduced by
		L. Peter Deutsch

	8-9pm: Special Presentation on INN - Rich Salz, OSF

	8-10pm: BoFs

Monday, 5 February 1996
	8-10am: Registration
	9am - 5pm: Tutorials
		M1: Programming the GNU/Hurd (full day) - 
			Michael I. Bushnell	
		M2: BSD Internals (am) - Margo Seltzer & 
			Aaron Brown
		M3: GCC (pm) - Richard M. Stallman
		M4: Perl (full day) - Tom Christiansen

Conference Registration: $200 (Students see *)

Tutorial fees:
		pre-reg	on-site
Half-day	$175	$220
One day 	$295	$375
One-and-a-half	$470	$570
Two days	$540	$640
(Students see *)

HOTEL INFORMATION

The conference will be held at the Cambridge Center Marriott,
just across the street from the MIT campus and at the Kendall/MIT
station of the Red Line ``T'' \(em the Boston subway.

To Make Your Hotel Reservation

Special hotel rates have been arranged for attendees at the Conference on 
Freely Redistributable Software:  US $95/night single or double.  There
are non-smoking rooms available.  Call the Cambridge Center Marriott 
directly: +1 800 228-9290 in the US and Canada; +1 617 494-6600 from 
elsewhere.  Fax: +1 617 494-0036.  To ensure that you get the 
special hotel rate, tell ``reservations'' that you 
are an attendee at the Conference on Freely Redistributable 
Software.

+1 800 228-9290 in the US and Canada; 
+1 617 494-6600 elsewhere

Program committee

Peter H. Salus, chair
Robert J. Chassell
Chris Demetriou
John Gilmore
Marshall Kirk McKusick
Rich Morin
Eric S. Raymond 
Vernor Vinge
----

TUTORIAL OFFERINGS

Saturday, February 3

Course S1.  Linux: An Open System For Everyone
(half-day tutorial, am); Instructor: Phil Hughes

Originally a PC-based product, Linux now runs on other hardware including
the Alpha. Linux is making serious inroads into commercial areas and,
in many cases, offers a viable Unix alternative at low cost.

Topics covered include:  What is Linux?; The Linux Copyright--GPL;
Linux Design Philosophy; Linux Distributions; Is Linux Commer-cially 
Viable?; Using Linux; Future of Linux.

Phil Hughes is the publisher of the \fILinux Journal\fP, the monthly 
magazine of the Linux community.

Course S2.  Installing and Running Linux
(half-day, pm); Instructor: Phil Hughes

This is a look ``under the hood.'' It will cover what makes up a Linux
system, what you need, how to install it, and what to do when something
goes wrong. 

Topics will include:  Assessing Hardware Requirements; Comparison of Linux 
Distributions; Configuration Decisions; Installation; Systems Administration;
Networking and Interoperability; What to do when something goes wrong.

Course S3. Expect -- Automating Interactive Applications
(full-day tutorial); Instructor: Don Libes

This tutorial will teach students how to automate
interactive programs such as telnet, ftp, passwd, and many other
applications.  It will also explain how to test interactive
applications, how to connect such applications, how to
reuse interactive programs in Web applications, and how to build X GUIs
without rewriting existing code; all this with security
and reliability.  An hour will be devoted to Tcl/tk.

Don Libes is the author of Exploring Expect 
and co-author of Life with Unix.  In another life he
works at NIST.

Course S4. C News
(half-day tutorial, am); Instructors: Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer

C News is one of the major reception/storage/expiry 
software packages; superseding B News completely, it is in widespread 
use.  

Topics will include: decisions that should be made before installation;
what resources you need; news database organization; configuring C News;
building, checking, and installing C News; setting up control files;
testing, troubleshooting, and startup; maintenance and housekeeping.

Geoff Collyer has been programming computers for almost a quarter-century,
and using and administering Unix systems for almost 20 years.  He is now 
a Member of Technical Staff in the Computing System Research Laboratory of 
AT&T Bell Laboratories.  

Henry Spencer is an independent consultant and
author, long involved with Usenet and netnews.  He and Geoff Collyer wrote
C News, the first high-performance package for Usenet article transport
and storage.  

Course S5. Advanced editing with Emacs
(half-day tutorial, pm); Instructor: Richard M. Stallman

Emacs is both an editor and a programming environment.  In 
this tutorial, the creator of the most popular of all Unix editors
will move beyond the everyday.  This tutorial will explain advanced 
Emacs facilities for editing text and programs and manipulating 
files -- features including programming language major modes, tags 
tables, enriched mode, and shell buffers -- all without Emacs Lisp 
programming.

Richard M. Stallman is the President of the Free Software 
Foundation and the creator of Emacs.  He is also the 
principal author of Bison and GCC.  

Monday, February 5

Course M1. Programming the GNU/Hurd
(full-day tutorial); Instructor: Michael I. Bushnell

The GNU/Hurd is a multi-server operating system which runs on Mach
3.0.  In Unix and most Mach-based systems, the majority of system
facilities are concentrated in a single entity (called variously the
`kernel' or the `single server').  The goal of this tutorial is to describe
the architecture of the Hurd with special attention to its innovative
aspects, as well as to provide guidance to programmers who wish to
program or extend the Hurd.  It will describe the existing Hurd servers 
and the library as well as cover subjects such as: The core interfaces of the 
GNU/Hurd for process management and I/O;  The implementation of signals 
entirely in the library, and how correctness is achieved;  How to use 
the additional libraries the Hurd provides to make writing servers easier;
The implementation of fork and exec.

Michael Bushnell is the principle architect and designer of the
GNU/Hurd.  He works for the FSF doing operating systems development.

Course M2.  BSD Internals
(half-day tutorial, am); Instructors: Margo Seltzer and Aaron Brown

This tutorial will present an overview of the kernel architecture
of 4.4BSD.  The presentation will emphasize porting to new
architectures.

Margo Seltzer received her Ph.D. from the University
of California at Berkeley, where she worked on file systems.
She is an assistant professor of Computer Science at Harvard University;
Aaron Brown is at Harvard University, where he has 
recently ported NetBSD to the SS 20.

Course M3.  Writing machine descriptions using GCC
(half-day tutorial, pm); Instructor: Richard M. Stallman

This tutorial will explain the overall organization of the GNU C
compiler and the RTL data structure, and how to use it to write 
a new machine description.  Students don't need to know anything about 
the GNU C internals, but should be prepared to learn fast.

Richard M. Stallman is the principal author of GCC.

Course M4. Perl Programming
(full-day tutorial); Instructor: Tom Christiansen

Perl is a publicly available and highly portable interpreted 
programming language occupying the large niche between shell and 
C programming.  Perl's syntax and features resemble C, in combination 
with the best parts of sh, sed, awk, etc.  Because Perl incorporates 
aspects of more than a dozen other Unix tools, experienced 
users will come up to speed on Perl rapidly.  This course is suitable 
for individuals who have barely looked at Perl before.  It is essential
that students have a strong background in Unix shell programming, with
a good working knowledge of regular expressions.  Some background in
sed, awk, and some C programming is useful but not essential.  Topics of 
this tutorial include detailed descriptions and numerous
examples of the syntax and semantics of the language, its data types,
operators, control flow, regular expressions, and I/O facilities, and
the Perl debugger.

Tom Christiansen is a software consultant specializing in Perl 
applications, optimizations, and training.  He serves on the 
Board of Directors of the USENIX Association, and is well-known 
for his courses in Perl programming.