[ast-users] dgk & gsf status

[Glenn Fowler]

As has been pointed out several times on the AST and UWIN lists, AT&T gives
very little support to OpenSouce software, which is why we have so few
people involved with our rather large collection of AST software. In spite
of this, ksh, nmake, vczip, UWIN and other AST tools continue to be used in
several AT&T projects.

It turns out that software isn't the only thing lacking support: both dgk
(AT&T fellow, 36 years of service) and gsf (AT&T fellow, 29 years of
service) have been terminated, effective October 10. Our third major
partner, Phong Vo (AT&T fellow, 32 years of service), left a few months ago
for Google. The UWIN maintainer, Jeff Fellin, is still with AT&T and
provides UWIN support for some critical operations.

Both dgk and gsf will continue to work on AST software, and might actually
have more time (at least in the short run) to focus on it.

The download site and mail groups will remain within AT&T for at least the
next several months. Our AT&T colleague, dr.ek, AST user and bug detector,
will maintain the site. We have secured the astopen.org domain and are
investigating non-AT&T hosting options, including a repository with bug
tracking.

The process of change will take time; the patience of the user community
will be greatly appreciated. Its quite a shock to have 3 weeks to plan
personal, career, and hacking futures after working in an environment that
has essentially been stable for almost 30 years. The user groups will be
informed as plans solidify.

New email:

dgk ***@gmail.com
gsf ***@gmail.com

Switch over to these soon: AT&T does not forward email of former employees.

Thanks
-dgk
-gsf

[Yves Crespin]

Words are missing.
Thank you for your involvement, your commitment.
You have worked on these projects to both your professional and personal
time. This is remarkable.
The continuity of your work is the outcome measure: immense.
Again thank you,

I used the Korn Shell since 1984 and I have provided to my clients a
Windows version of my software thanks to UWin.
I was touched on this occasion by the humility of David on very specific
aspects of the sockets.

yves


*yves* crespin
t. +33.(0)6.86.42.86.81
[image: LinkedIn] <http://fr.linkedin.com/in/yvescrespin> [image:
Skype]yvescrespin

Post by Glenn Fowler
As has been pointed out several times on the AST and UWIN lists, AT&T
gives very little support to OpenSouce software, which is why we have so
few people involved with our rather large collection of AST software. In
spite of this, ksh, nmake, vczip, UWIN and other AST tools continue to be
used in several AT&T projects.
It turns out that software isn't the only thing lacking support: both dgk
(AT&T fellow, 36 years of service) and gsf (AT&T fellow, 29 years of
service) have been terminated, effective October 10. Our third major
partner, Phong Vo (AT&T fellow, 32 years of service), left a few months ago
for Google. The UWIN maintainer, Jeff Fellin, is still with AT&T and
provides UWIN support for some critical operations.
Both dgk and gsf will continue to work on AST software, and might actually
have more time (at least in the short run) to focus on it.
The download site and mail groups will remain within AT&T for at least the
next several months. Our AT&T colleague, dr.ek, AST user and bug detector,
will maintain the site. We have secured the astopen.org domain and are
investigating non-AT&T hosting options, including a repository with bug
tracking.
The process of change will take time; the patience of the user community
will be greatly appreciated. Its quite a shock to have 3 weeks to plan
personal, career, and hacking futures after working in an environment that
has essentially been stable for almost 30 years. The user groups will be
informed as plans solidify.
Switch over to these soon: AT&T does not forward email of former employees.
Thanks
-dgk
-gsf
_______________________________________________
ast-developers mailing list
http://lists.research.att.com/mailman/listinfo/ast-developers

[Dan Douglas]

Post by Yves Crespin
Words are missing.

AST/Ksh both themselves and their far-reaching influence on so much of the software I use every day make life so much easier. "Thank You" feels inadequate.

regards,
Dan Douglas

[Glenn Fowler]

thanks for the kind remarks

based on a few comment a clarification is in order

in this statement AST means AST+UWIN -- UWIN will not fall by the wayside,
at least not as long as dgk and I have friends and family with windows

Post by Glenn Fowler
Both dgk and gsf will continue to work on AST software, and might

actually have more time

Post by Glenn Fowler
(at least in the short run) to focus on it.
As has been pointed out several times on the AST and UWIN lists, AT&T
gives very little support to OpenSouce software, which is why we have so
few people involved with our rather large collection of AST software. In
spite of this, ksh, nmake, vczip, UWIN and other AST tools continue to be
used in several AT&T projects.
It turns out that software isn't the only thing lacking support: both dgk
(AT&T fellow, 36 years of service) and gsf (AT&T fellow, 29 years of
service) have been terminated, effective October 10. Our third major
partner, Phong Vo (AT&T fellow, 32 years of service), left a few months ago
for Google. The UWIN maintainer, Jeff Fellin, is still with AT&T and
provides UWIN support for some critical operations.
Both dgk and gsf will continue to work on AST software, and might actually
have more time (at least in the short run) to focus on it.
The download site and mail groups will remain within AT&T for at least the
next several months. Our AT&T colleague, dr.ek, AST user and bug detector,
will maintain the site. We have secured the astopen.org domain and are
investigating non-AT&T hosting options, including a repository with bug
tracking.
The process of change will take time; the patience of the user community
will be greatly appreciated. Its quite a shock to have 3 weeks to plan
personal, career, and hacking futures after working in an environment that
has essentially been stable for almost 30 years. The user groups will be
informed as plans solidify.
Switch over to these soon: AT&T does not forward email of former employees.
Thanks
-dgk
-gsf

[David A. Morano, PE, PhD]

Hello David and Glenn,

Post by Glenn Fowler
It turns out that software isn't the only thing lacking support: both dgk
(AT&T fellow, 36 years of service) and gsf (AT&T fellow, 29 years of
service) have been terminated, effective October 10. Our third major
partner, Phong Vo (AT&T fellow, 32 years of service), left a few months ago
for Google. The UWIN maintainer, Jeff Fellin, is still with AT&T and
provides UWIN support for some critical operations.
...

Stunned!

But I am not totally surprised since AT&T is nothing like the research
outfit it was in years past (I used to work for it myself starting back
in the old Bell-Telephone-Laboratories days). For those who know, the
current AT&T shares pretty much mostly only the corporate name with its
old namesake, retained for its immense marketing value. I also had the
benefit of using KSH since about 1984; we all used the old "history"
shell before that (and Bourne shell before even that).

I wish you both all possible success in whatever endeavors you each end
up in. With AT&T giving up you both especially, it really seems to mark
the end of a certain era of core system software development.

I and many (many) others know that you both put into your work way
more over and above any call of duty (day and night). You both have
really given a Herculean commitment and devotion to the AST suite.
Thank you both for your immense contributions to date to the core UNIX
software suite.

All the best for the future!

----

David A. Morano, PE, PhD
***@computer.org

[Irek Szczesniak]

Post by Glenn Fowler
As has been pointed out several times on the AST and UWIN lists, AT&T gives
very little support to OpenSouce software, which is why we have so few
people involved with our rather large collection of AST software. In spite
of this, ksh, nmake, vczip, UWIN and other AST tools continue to be used in
several AT&T projects.
It turns out that software isn't the only thing lacking support: both dgk
(AT&T fellow, 36 years of service) and gsf (AT&T fellow, 29 years of
service) have been terminated, effective October 10. Our third major
partner, Phong Vo (AT&T fellow, 32 years of service), left a few months ago
for Google. The UWIN maintainer, Jeff Fellin, is still with AT&T and
provides UWIN support for some critical operations.
Both dgk and gsf will continue to work on AST software, and might actually
have more time (at least in the short run) to focus on it.
The download site and mail groups will remain within AT&T for at least the
next several months. Our AT&T colleague, dr.ek, AST user and bug detector,
will maintain the site. We have secured the astopen.org domain and are
investigating non-AT&T hosting options, including a repository with bug
tracking.
The process of change will take time; the patience of the user community
will be greatly appreciated. Its quite a shock to have 3 weeks to plan
personal, career, and hacking futures after working in an environment that
has essentially been stable for almost 30 years. The user groups will be
informed as plans solidify.

This is quite a shock, but detail analysis shows that AT&T was fixed
down that path for at least the last 4-5 years. Research was ongoing
but it appeared to be disconnected from what the rest of AT&T was
doing and neither was the "rest" much interested what AT&T Research
was doing. Such a disconnect is unhealthy for both sides.

But... this is all not important right now.

First question is: Can the community help?

Second question is: What will happen to the AST and UWIN projects?
Both have solid and good codebases, but almost no market share, which
is mostly an issue that (compared to GNU, GNU coreutils or Cygwin) no
lobbying happens. Each time a major or minor feature hits in GNU
territory a lot of fuzz is made while AST and UWIN do... nothing,
except a small entry in RELEASE.
The other notable problem is the lack of community integration, with
the top items being a public bug tracker, a public GIT or Subversion
repository where development happens (the old GIT tree was a joke
because only releases showed up there, what's needed is that you do
individual commits there) and a software library for UWIN.

Irek

[Irek Szczesniak]

Post by Irek Szczesniak

Post by Glenn Fowler
As has been pointed out several times on the AST and UWIN lists, AT&T gives
very little support to OpenSouce software, which is why we have so few
people involved with our rather large collection of AST software. In spite
of this, ksh, nmake, vczip, UWIN and other AST tools continue to be used in
several AT&T projects.
It turns out that software isn't the only thing lacking support: both dgk
(AT&T fellow, 36 years of service) and gsf (AT&T fellow, 29 years of
service) have been terminated, effective October 10. Our third major
partner, Phong Vo (AT&T fellow, 32 years of service), left a few months ago
for Google. The UWIN maintainer, Jeff Fellin, is still with AT&T and
provides UWIN support for some critical operations.
Both dgk and gsf will continue to work on AST software, and might actually
have more time (at least in the short run) to focus on it.
The download site and mail groups will remain within AT&T for at least the
next several months. Our AT&T colleague, dr.ek, AST user and bug detector,
will maintain the site. We have secured the astopen.org domain and are
investigating non-AT&T hosting options, including a repository with bug
tracking.
The process of change will take time; the patience of the user community
will be greatly appreciated. Its quite a shock to have 3 weeks to plan
personal, career, and hacking futures after working in an environment that
has essentially been stable for almost 30 years. The user groups will be
informed as plans solidify.

This is quite a shock, but detail analysis shows that AT&T was fixed
down that path for at least the last 4-5 years. Research was ongoing
but it appeared to be disconnected from what the rest of AT&T was
doing and neither was the "rest" much interested what AT&T Research
was doing. Such a disconnect is unhealthy for both sides.
But... this is all not important right now.
First question is: Can the community help?
Second question is: What will happen to the AST and UWIN projects?
Both have solid and good codebases, but almost no market share, which
is mostly an issue that (compared to GNU, GNU coreutils or Cygwin) no
lobbying happens. Each time a major or minor feature hits in GNU
territory a lot of fuzz is made while AST and UWIN do... nothing,
except a small entry in RELEASE.
The other notable problem is the lack of community integration, with
the top items being a public bug tracker, a public GIT or Subversion
repository where development happens (the old GIT tree was a joke
because only releases showed up there, what's needed is that you do
individual commits there) and a software library for UWIN.

Brainstorming with my staff here:
Third: Allow 3rd-party people to commit changes to the main branches
of ast-open and UWIN codebases (after code review and approval of
course)

Fourth: Better documentation. The documentation of both ast-open and
UWIN is, as understatement, very terse and not sufficient to help
beginners.

Irek

[Eleftherios Koutsofios]

hello fellow AST and UWIN users.

Glenn and Dave's departure from at&t research is very sad for all of us
here.
I've worked with them my entire career. Dave was actually my first
supervisor
when I joined Bell Labs. I've used many of the tools they've built and I
still do.
AST and UWIN are used in several parts of the company including through
systems I've built so I don't think that their work was irrelevant to
the company.

but anyway, the good news is that they will continue to maintain this
software.

I wanted to let you know what our current plans are for AST & UWIN.

dgk & gsf's departure also co-insides with the final part of our move to
a new
location. the servers that support the web site and mailing lists will
be shut down
around Oct 9. they should be back up by Monday Oct. 14 at the latest.

since Glenn's account will be disabled on Oct. 10, we're setting up
another account
to take over the web site pages. we hope to have this done before this
shutdown.
it's a very tight schedule since Glenn must also deal with his
retirement process.

for a while after this, we'll continue to run as today, except that
Glenn will be
sending me updates and I'll be updating the web site.

after the dust settles from this move, and unless AST & UWIN move off at&t
servers altogether, I plan to ask for a server to be put on the public
network,
using the name astopen.org. this will allow Glenn to update things directly,
plus we'll be able to run bug-tracking and other such services and to use
GIT more properly.

thanks

lefteris