SCaLE ’24 Between Open Source & Innovation
From March 14-17, the Pasadena Convention Center buzzed with the energy of SCaLE 21x – the premier open-source event in North America. Drawing over 3000 enthusiasts, developers, and professionals, SCaLE provided a platform for sharing, learning, and collaboration within the vibrant open-source community.
Celebrating Open Source
At its core, SCaLE 21x ’24 was a celebration of open-source technologies and the community driving their advancement. From insightful presentations to hands-on workshops, attendees immersed themselves in discussions on the latest trends, innovations, and challenges shaping the open-source landscape.
LPI Engagement
Linux Professional Institute (LPI) was proud to be a part of SCaLE 21x, reaffirming its commitment to promoting Linux and open-source education. SCaLE 21x boasted a lineup of distinguished speakers, including Jon “maddog” Hall, Chairman of the LPI Board of Directors. With his unparalleled expertise and insights, maddog captivated audiences with two compelling presentations: “How Is Linux Like a Player Piano?” and “Project Caua: Students Creating Their Own Businesses.”
Reflections from Jon “maddog” Hall
Reflecting on his experience at SCaLE 21x, maddog remarked: “SCALE is a great conference. It stresses Open Source and attracts end users, developers and software distributions to attend both the vendor exhibits and the many talks. I not only got to see some old friends from the Linux community, but also from the Unix community, such as Darrell Straus who first used Linux/Alpha systems to do the CGI rendering for the movie “Titanic” and Bill Cheswick, who was active with DECUS, USENIX and Bell Labs (and who gave the final keynote talk this year).
I also got a chance to have an interview with the LA Chapter of Linuxchix and an interview about my path with Open Source which extends back in time to 1969: http://tuxdigital.com/dl366. All, in all, a great time.”
Looking Ahead
As SCaLE 21x ’24 concluded, it left behind a legacy of inspiration, collaboration, and forward momentum. The event served as a testament to the power of community-driven initiatives in advancing open-source technologies. As we look to the future, let us carry forward the spirit of innovation and collaboration nurtured at SCaLE 21x, paving the way for a more vibrant and inclusive open-source ecosystem.
About Harrison Amit:
That computer on the desk is a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) “Universal Desktop Box” (UDB), a 64-bit Alpha processor in the format of a desktop workstation. DEC had two other workstations called “Multia”. One was a 64-bit Alpha running WNT and the other was a 32-bit Intel system running WNT. Unfortunately (for DEC) both versions of WNT only had a 32-bit address space.
DEC had produced tens of thousands of “Multia” systems, but they hardly sold. They were sitting in the warehouse.
Product management of the hardware came to me and asked if we could put 64-bit Linux on it. I said “Of course”.
But we had a problem. The contract with Microsoft said we had to put WNT on every “Multia”. So we had to come up with a new name, new branding, new hardware documentation scrubbing the name “Multia” and substituting the name “Universal Desktop Box”.
My favorite story of the time was a friend who was a DEC partner bought 4000 “Universal Desktop Boxes” and sold them to Russia. He had to accompany the 4000 UDBs across the border, with armed guard that he had to hire, just so they would get to the purchaser.
When asked why they purchased 4000 USBs, the customer said “But comrade, they compile code very quickly!”