WOS 3 / Program / Panels / Free Software / Beyond the Unix Paradigm?
Opening Speeches Opening Keynote Free Software Free Software in the Public Sector Free Software Economics Free Software & Quality Management Free Video Software Free Privacy Enhancing Technologies Open Archives I. Emulators Beyond the Unix Paradigm? Free Content CC I. Launch of Creative Commons Germany CC II. Creative Commons Summit Wikipedia and Friends Free Science I. Publishing Free Science II. Funding and Activism Art as Anticopright Activism Open Archives II. Games Globalization of Free Knowledge Cultures Globalization I. Globalization II. Internet Freedom goes East I. Internet Freedom goes East II. WSIS: Globalization of Civil Society Free Infrastructures Keynote on Peer-to-Peer Free Standards Free Wireless Networks Free Search Engines Copyrights Alternative Compensation Systems The Future of the Digital Commons Beyond the Unix Paradigm? Friday, 11 June 2004, 17:00, Track 1 Quo vadis, Free Software? All popular Free Software operating systems, the free BSDs and GNU/Linux, are Unix-/POSIX-compatible. On their lower non-graphical levels, they keep up the classical Unix design of a monolithic kernel and a modular "userland" of small independent, but interconnected software tools. Here, Free Software provides nothing conceptually new, but free implementations of proven technology. Is this about to change? The panel features current Free Software development projects which aim to rethink vital parts of the operating system, either by going beyond the Unix paradigm, or by radically reinvigorating it in its virtues. The non-monolithic GNU Hurd kernel envisions a whole new way of providing low-level system resources to users. The virtual machine architectures of Parrot (the future basis of the Perl and Python scripting languages) and Mono (a software layer compatible to Microsoft's .NET) could change the userland and promise new ways of writing applications across programming languages. Other developers on the contrary seek to fight increasing software complexity by replacing vital system components with lean, simplified alternatives. The panel brings together well-respected experts and protagonists of cutting-edge Free Software development to discuss, with perhaps dissenting standpoints, how the free software of the future should look like. Mod: Florian Cramer Comparative Philologist, Berlin Tom Schwaller Free Software Evangelist, Founder Linux-Magazin, Architect Linux-Community.de, Developer of Webware, Munich Marcus Brinkmann GNU/Hurd, Bochum Leopold "Leo" Tötsch Programmer, Coauthor of Perl6 Essentials / Perl6 and Parrot Essentials, 2nd ed (O'Reilly), Hernbaumgarten, Austria Felix von Leitner Software Developer, Code Blau GmbH, Berlin Discussion

All original works on this website unless otherwise noted are
copyright protected and licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License Germany.