Interesting note from Marty Connor, creator of Rom-o-matic, and
Etherboot developer.
I just thought you all might be interested to see what he's up to now.
Jim McQuillan
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 21:00:20 -0500
From: Marty Connor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Etherboot Developers List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Etherboot Users List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Etherboot-users] The coolest thing
The years pass quickly.
In the Spring of 1999 I was in Durham, North Carolina, at a small trade show
called Linux Expo put on by an interesting young company called Red Hat
Software. I was looking for the coolest thing I could find there. I knew I
wanted to hack, and Free Software was where I wanted to do that hacking.
Having spent four years working at MIT in the early to mid 1980s, and having
shared an office with Richard Stallman, I had seen and participated firsthand in
the evolution of the ideas that became GNU. The philosophical and moral basis
of Free Software was and is something that I came to understand and appreciate.
In the years since working at MIT, I had worked with a few companies, and in
1989 I started my own company to help people who use Apple Macintosh computers
make the most of them. I still own that company, and still have quite a few of
the clients who I started the business with. It has been rewarding to work with
people for so long, and to see their businesses grow, and to be helpful to them.
But back in 1999 at Linux Expo I was looking for something cool. Something so
interesting that I just had to understand it and hack it and help make it more
than it was. I had no idea what it would be, but I went to Durham with the
desire to simply walk around with open eyes and an open mind and see what
happened.
After wandering around the exhibit hall, and taking in a few seminars, I found a
booth with something called "Thin Clients". Having dealt a little bit with Sun
workstations at MIT, I was not completely unfamiliar with the concept of client
machines booting from a network, but to see the tiny boxes serving Free Software
-- that was powerful -- and very, very cool.
The man at the booth was Glenn Jacobson of Unique Systems, and he was excited
about using these Thin Client workstations to reduce costs for businesses. He
talked about both the cost of the hardware, but also of TCO, or Total Cost of
Ownership. He made a compelling case for the technology, and I certainly
thought it was cool. The little boxes he demonstrated ran proprietary software,
however, and so I made a note of them, but didn't see much of a hacking
opportunity. (Glenn passed away last year, and we will miss him).
Later in the show I met Ron Colcernian and Jim McQuillan who described how there
were people who were working on creating Open Source boot ROMs for network
cards, and pointed me to the Netboot project. Jim, of course, went on to create
and lead LTSP.org, a very successful Open Source thin client project.
After the show, I kept thinking about thin clients and network booting and how
powerful this combination could be. It was something that fit so perfectly with
the idea of Free Software. It was something I had to understand and support. I
also liked the closeness to bare metal of network booting. Understanding how
things work is a passion for me.
I sent my first message to the Netboot mailing list in July 1999. Shortly after
that I began a conversation with Ken Yap that has continued to this day.
Over the years I have done what I can to support, enhance, and proliferate
Etherboot, and Open Source network booting in general. It still remains
something I find very, very cool. Over the years I have hacked drivers, figured
out how to make Etherboot look like a Linux kernel so it could be loaded by LILO
and GRUB, figured out how to make Etherboot ROMs PNP compatible, and funded and
managed PXE integration into Etherboot. I also enjoy helping people on the
mailing lists, and have hopefully gotten some people turned on to Free Software,
both the technology and the community aspects.
I registered the etherboot.org domain in September 2002, and have hosted DNS,
email, and various other services since then. It's some of the invisible
machinery, but it needs to be done, and I am happy (and able) to do it.
Then there are the LinuxWorld Expo .ORG booths. I have represented Etherboot at
seven shows so far, and I recently learned that we have been invited to the
Boston show in February 2005, which will be eight.
I still enjoy watching people's faces as they see a machine booted from an
Ethernet card with a ROM on it. It still retains the magic after all these
years. And then when it occurs to them that using Linux and other Free Software
that they can deploy a network of machines inexpensively and maintainably, I
feel good about the time spent.
Many thanks to Jim McQuillan of LTSP for helping make sure we got it for this
Boston show. It has been a great pleasure and privilege to represent Etherboot
at the premier Linux trade shows in the US so many times. It requires a lot of
work to do it, but I think it has been well worth the effort.
Last but not least, perhaps the single most useful thing I did for Open Source
network booting was to create and host the rom-o-matic.net web site, which
allows anyone to create Etherboot ROMs on demand. It has been up for over 4
years now (since 27 October 2000), and now generates over 200000 ROM images a
year, all free, and without commercial interruption. It has taken a lot of time
and energy to support this site, but it has been very rewarding. It reflects my
sensibilities in a lot of ways -- minimalist, reliable, and over the years
people seem to have just come to expect it to work. That is a great compliment,
both to me and to all the people who have made Etherboot so successful. It just
works, and often people don't even think twice about how that happens.
I needed to say all the preceding because looking back sometimes helps one look
forward, and after a lot of thought, I have decided that I want to go in a new
direction. Ken and I have corresponded privately, and he has given his
blessing, for which I am most grateful.
So, what do I plan to do now?
I plan to revive and lead the NILO project, which has been dormant for a number
of years.
Nilo.org has some background on the project, and it, like Etherboot, is hosted
on Sourceforge.net. NILO was originally conceived as an evolution of Etherboot
and Netboot -- an Open Source PXE client. I would like to continue this work,
and to extend it. Initially it will be much like Etherboot, but over time I
expect there will be some divergence, and hopefully both projects will help each
other and inspire each other.
Why do I want to do this?
Well, I guess the simple answer is that I think it would be a good thing, both
for me and the Free Software community. Etherboot has grown and prospered, and
I have enjoyed helping it do so. At this point, however, I find myself wishing
to lead a project of my own, and to try things that would be incompatible with
some of the directions I think Ken wants Etherboot to move in.
One of the great features of Free Software is that the code remains Free (libre)
no matter what happens. This has the nice property that if someone wants to use
code from one project as the basis for another project, they may. We all
understand this going into a project, and because of this, code can be reused
and improved and help other projects in ways unimagined by the original authors.
It is important to me is to create as little disturbance to the Etherboot
project as possible with this transition. Etherboot has a healthy number of
core developers and receives patches from quite a few people.
While I wish to take the code in some different directions, I also wish
Etherboot to continue to prosper, and, as Ken and I have discussed, I expect to
continue to be peripherally associated with Etherboot, and to contribute where I
can.
So, what's next?
This message is the first step in letting folks know that I am going to be
working on NILO. I am not sure exactly what will happen next or when, but I
think that this is the right thing for me to do. I hope to work on creation of
something that is both personally rewarding and helpful to the Free Software
community.
Since Etherboot has been chosen to participate in the LinuxWorld Expo that is
scheduled for February in Boston, I plan to represent the project there one last
time. I also plan to continue support of rom-o-matic.net. I will be around,
and will help when I can.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank everyone who I have worked with on Etherboot over the
years. You have all made this a wondrous and wonderful experience, and I
appreciate that you've allowed my code to touch your machines, and hopefully my
words have been helpful.
I am not disappearing, merely becoming less involved in this particular project,
and finding and following my path.
Thanks for the privilege of being of service,
Marty
--
Try: http://rom-o-matic.net/ to make Etherboot images instantly.
Name: Marty Connor
US Mail: Entity Cyber, Inc.; P.O. Box 391827;
Cambridge, MA 02139; USA
Voice: (617) 491-6935; Fax: (617) 491-7046
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web: http://www.etherboot.org/
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