Dear Daria, I remember those early days with much fondness, and I'm happy then (as I'm happy now) to be able to call you my friend. While I haven't been extremely active in OpenAFS for a while, you have certainly been a rock of the project. However I'm also sure that it will, somehow, survive with your departure. Regardless, you will be missed.
Please keep us aprised of your future endeavors. Yours, -derek Daria Phoebe Brashear <[email protected]> writes: > It's been two years, today, since one of the defining moments in my recent > life. As I picked myself up from my toppled bicycle, some folks pulled up, and > shortly I was speeding across the city. I couldn't see what was passing > outside, but I knew where I was every inch of the way. This is my city. A > friend jokes that the person I used to be died in the hospital that night so I > could be born. He is not far off the truth. Not all such defining moments in > my life have involved broken bones and being bandaged like a mummy, though: > > I've never seen a computer with such a large monitor, I thought, as I sat down > in front of a 19" monochrome display. Just a hair over twenty-four years ago, > I found myself sitting at a DECstation 3100, typing the username and initial > password of the form all students received, and having an unfamiliar graphical > user interface come into view. Until that point, the single Macintosh with > System 7 at my high school was the extent of the GUIs I'd come in contact > with. > > I don't remember what I first typed up, but the custom-built computing > environment that had preceded me at Carnegie Mellon by only a few years > offered its own rich text editor. I'd become quite familiar with it while > doing assignments over the next few months. I saved my file, and logged out. > Curious as to what would happen, I logged in again immediately to confirm that > things looked the same as they had moments earlier. But it was time for work, > and I again logged out so I could go into a back office in the library and > spend several hours cataloging new books. Later that day, though, I chose a > different computer, and tried again. My files were there, too. The concept was > completely new to me. > > By my second year as an undergraduate, I was well-acquainted with AFS. I had > acquired a workstation of my own, a Sun 3/160, and had set it up as a hybrid > between the university's computing system and standalone. AFS was a commercial > product, but I was able to find binaries the university had licensed that I > could use. Weeks later, in a moment that would presage work I now do in > helping to improve security and usability, I realized that source code > probably could be found in a readable place somewhere in this giant global > filesystem, and soon had something only slightly obsolete that I could build > myself. > > My first full time job was with the university's academic computing > organization. When the previous Transarc/IBM site contact left for a job > elsewhere, AFS became my responsibility. By this point, I knew how the pieces > worked, even if I was not familiar with every detail of the internals. So, six > years from when I discovered the wonders of a distributed filesystem, I found > myself in a position to push to legally develop for what was essentially a > closed source commercial product for most of the world. The community > grapevine suggested the DARPA grants used to fund some early work on the > product could be used to obtain public domain copies of some of the source, > and I used my new-found role as site contact to ask hard questions. After all, > I had been given a bully pulpit. > > The first piece to be thus freed was Rx, the RPC system layered above UDP. A > copy of the letter I received from the corporate attorney describing what was > legally available has been online since shortly thereafter. I passed the > source along, and a group of developers at a university in Stockholm picked it > up for their project: an AFS protocol-compatible client called Arla. I soon > found myself working on it, but at the same time I still had access to the > fully-functional closed source product, so I had to exercise care in what I > did. > > Just a couple years later, after increasingly-scattershot support of the > product, IBM announced their intended end-of-life for AFS. I was one among > many voices who started nagging immediately. And so, when in summer 2000 I was > at an academic computing forum in Seattle, the call we received from IBM > provided news that was welcome and relieving: AFS would be open-sourced just a > few months hence. My peers at other institutions that used AFS and had source > licenses joined with me to help create an organization which would be ready to > take the code drop and do something great with it. I proposed an organization > modeled roughly on the one that had hosted the forum where the call had been > taken. To insulate against member organizations trying to sink the product, > their employees would be individual members of our board, and represent the > interests of their employer in the way they felt best captured it. For better > and for worse, the open source organization I proposed then is the one we have > had ever since. > > OpenAFS, as it would come to be called, was released just about the time > Subversion was. Transarc had built their own version control on top of RCS, > but our code drop would not include that. We got code representing a distinct > point in time, and had to build a new means of managing it. Again I drew on > what was familiar, and built a partial toolset above CVS to mimic the best > parts of the way in which Transarc had managed their source. Among the first > things that happened was the need to apply the IBM Public License to the code > in a way that correctly represented what rights could be ascribed to which > files. There, again, I can tell you that the group of us who did the work made > some unfortunate mistakes. We did the best we could in the face of limited > accommodation from IBM's legal staff, who felt they'd spent too much time > already in getting to the point we were at. > > In hindsight, the license OpenAFS was saddled with has been its biggest issue. > IBM never used that instance of the license again. Ongoingly, its > incompatibility with the GPL has combined with other factors to make Linux > support a heavy burden: sometimes free isn't *free enough*. > > In spite of the issues facing us and the bare shoestring of resources > available, we were able to support and improve OpenAFS on a variety of > platforms. The common ones, Solaris and Linux, got more love than the exotic > enterprise System 5 variants, to be sure, but we released and supported > platforms including AIX, HP/UX, and IRIX. We added support for NetBSD and > eventually MacOS X. Just under a year into the project, I found myself on a > train to Boston. Over the course of the long ride, I built the first autoconf > support OpenAFS ever had. Mobile internet was not in my grasp, and laptop > drives were considerably smaller. I took some documentation and examples with > me, and learned as I went. It was characteristic of my experiences getting to > that point: my formal education was in engineering rather than computer > science. > > Over the course of the next several years, there would be a community to grow > and sustain in addition to simply caring for code. The community was comprised > of the end-users of the product, the developers -- volunteers from the > perspective of OpenAFS, and the organizations which deployed it. As with any > mature technology, we had many people you'd consider to be 'characters' > involved. Certainly at the time I was one of them. My personal life was one > high in stress and low in happiness, and so anyone who perceived me as > miserable probably wasn't far off the mark. It was made no easier by being, > effectively, the provider of last resort. If no one else would do something > that we absolutely needed, I marshaled the only resource I controlled: me. > Still, I tried with varying success to be involved in positive change. > > Four and a half years into the OpenAFS project, I had reached a point where I > felt that my relationship with Carnegie Mellon had reached the point of > diminishing returns. We were bad for each other, even toxic. I moved on to a > full time position with Sine Nomine Associates, for whom I had been doing > contract work on OpenAFS for several years already. More personally, I took > the largest leap of faith I'd ever done in my life. By the time I hosted the > 5th birthday of the project at my house, I had unloaded much of the misery as > well as about 90 of the pounds on my person, meaning the weight thus lifted > was both literal and figurative. For the next 3 years, I continued to work on > growing OpenAFS while also supporting a number of corporate and academic > customers in my new-found role. > > Again, though, I felt the need for change, and moved on to try my hand > independently. I considered again, as I had when I left CMU, if the time was > right to do something else with my life. As previously, though, I felt I had > more to give to OpenAFS, and I did not want to let the community down. So, I > kept contributing, and ended up getting onboard at Your File System, Inc. > > Much as when things started with AFS, the global filesystem product we have > been developing is just one piece of a suite, the fabric which can and will > tie together many uses. Auristor was built from the start to be compatible > with the AFS protocol shared with the original IBM product, OpenAFS, Arla and > Linux kAFS, while still offering new security, reliability and performance > features not previously available in any of the others. It has been an > exciting time, again, to work on a distributed filesystem. > > As you have possibly also noticed, though, it has also been an exciting time > to be me. Forty years into my life, I finally came to grips with something I > knew but did not fully understand on the day I sat down at that DECstation so > many years ago. I did not learn much of the reality of what it meant to be > transgender until I found the Internet. Even in its primitive state, the > indexes to information I was able to find when I was finally introduced to > Gopher far dwarfed what I could learn simply from perusing the card catalog at > the vast library across the ravine from me. What I learned, early on, > contributed to the hopelessness that would continue to accumulate. So when at > last I realized it was time for a second giant leap of faith in my life, I > again jumped. > > My new epoch came just about when my unplanned hospital visit did. It was very > trying to explain the situation repeatedly at the time. I had to carefully > pick about in the world, ensuring I would find support to sustain me in the > face of possible devastation, and it took many months to again patch together > my life in a manner where I felt like I could safely just exist. And there > would be damage unintentionally inflicted upon me even more often than when > deliberate malice was in play. > > In spite of that, just weeks after beginning hormone replacement therapy, I > found myself in a lecture hall at CERN with some of you, and spoke as I always > had about the status of our progress. My self-awareness as I did so was > certainly far greater, though, than it had been for any other time, and the > blazing red dress that clothed me was a statement of self-embodiment I had > never made in a public forum before. I had no idea what to expect, but what I > got was pretty much the same as always: the respect you'd hopefully accord any > peer. > > As I continued to work both on filesystems and on myself, I was afforded many > opportunities to see shortcomings that I had managed to overlook before. The > journey to becoming externally congruent with the person I always was inside > lifted a lot of extra weight from my shoulders, and so unburdened I could take > on things I might previously have glossed over. The OpenAFS community had > never had much consideration for diversity, as in many ways we were not so > much recruiting new members as trying to sustain and support the ones we > already had. This is probably my greatest personal regret looking back. And > while I was not and have not been made to feel unwelcome, I felt it best for > others to ensure that going forward, a code of conduct for contributors was in > place, something OpenAFS has just adopted. We also, for the first time, had a > code of conduct for attendees at an AFS Workshop just weeks ago. To my > knowledge, there was no inappropriate behavior, but having a framework in > place to deal is like with anything else a good idea. > > My spouse, my colleagues, my family and my friends have all been wonderful and > supportive regarding my transition, but it has imposed new needs in my life, > as well as allowing me the opportunity to see new ways to contribute to the > global good. I can honestly tell you that the present is the happiest I have > been in my life. But there is still much work to be done personally, > professionally and globally, and I am but one woman. I will have additional > stresses in my transition. Auristor, our signature product, will require yet > more of my time. And there are so many injustices in the world that I feel I > need to help right. > > So it is with great regret that I now tender my resignation from the OpenAFS > project as an elder, a gatekeeper, and a member of the foundation creation > committee. It has been a great run over these past nearly 15 years, and as > someone who works at a vendor supplying AFS-compatible technology I shall > continue to be part of the community. However, I have been increasingly unable > to devote sufficient time to OpenAFS, and rather than give far from the best I > have to offer, I feel it is best to move aside and give those who might step > up and do better the full and unburdened opportunity to do so. I hope to run > into you at future AFS events, and please know that I will continue to > contribute in the ways I feel I can. > > All the best, > Daria Phoebe > -- Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/ PP-ASEL-IA N1NWH [email protected] PGP key available _______________________________________________ OpenAFS-info mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info
