SIGOPS Annual Report

July 1998 - June 1999
Submitted by: Carla Ellis, Past Chair,
and William Weihl, Chair

Awards

SIGOPS has had no awards, other than the selection of distinguished papers by the program committee of the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP). However, with the death of Mark Weiser in the Spring of 1999, the SIGOPS leadership began discussing an endowed award in his name. The nature of the award would be to recognize innovation and encourage young researchers. The exact details are still under discussion, but we hope to have the proposal for this new award approved in time for an announcement at the next SOSP in December 1999 (which would require approval at the Fall ACM Council meeting).

Technical Activities

One of the strengths of SIGOPS is that its mission can be broadly interpreted so that it can continue to embrace the rapid pace of change in the computing systems field and serve as an incubator for emerging topics that relate to software systems design. This is evident in the evolution of the new technical material that appears in our conference programs.

Traditionally, the SIGOPS European Workshop is held in the Fall of even-numbered years (odd-numbered fiscal years). Each time it is held, it is based on a theme. The 1998 European Workshop was held near Lisbon, Portugal under the excellent organization of Paulo Guedes. It focussed on "Systems Support for Composing Distribution Applications." This theme reflected the increasing importance of distributed, large-scale, wide-area system software. In the words of Jean Bacon, the program chair, "We continued to look upward and outward from the design of a single operating systems kernel for our choice of topic." The program included papers dealing with mobile code and related security issues, internet Quality of Service, embedded systems, multimedia, and adaptation. The next workshop in 2000 will be organized by Marc Shapiro (past Vice Chair) as General Chair, Paulo Guedes as Program Chair, and Eric Jul as Local Arrangements.

The Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI) is also held in the odd-numbered fiscal years. It is organized by USENIX with SIGOPS co-sponsorship. This year it was held in New Orleans in February 1999. Paul Leach (past SIGOPS Treasurer) and Margo Seltzer were Program Co-Chairs. The keynote speech discussed the intersection of the World Wide Web and Operating Systems.

Services for Members

Planning for the next Symposium on Operating System Principles (SOSP), our premier biennial technical conference, is well underway. It will be held at Kiawah Island, South Carolina in December 1999. David Kotz (the new SIGOPS Treasurer) is General Chair and John Wilkes is Program Chair. Student participation is one of the highest priorities related to this event. One major change this time is the increased level of industrial funding, especially for student travel grants. Last time (1997), we got NSF funding for student travel to France, but various conditions specified by NSF (e.g. a limitation on the number of awards per institution, restriction to US institutions only) resulted in funds left unspent. With industrial funding, it was hoped that those conditions could be relaxed and the program expanded, resulting in more students being served. Money directly from the SIGOPS budget goes toward these scholarships, as well.

SIGOPS has also agreed to work with MAB on the implementation of a LINUX Quest (a student programming contest based on LINUX).

Holding the 1997 SOSP in St. Malo, France was a success along many dimensions: technically, financially, and in encouraging the European SIGOPS community. Since then, the French SIGOPS local chapter has gotten organized and has held its first conference. The French community is very strong and is a fertile source for European volunteers such as our new Vice Chair, Valerie Issarny.

A SIGOPS mailing list was established under control of the Information Director, Mary Baker. SIGOPS publishes a quarterly newsletter, Operating Systems Review (OSR). William Waite (University of Colorado) continues as editor of our newsletter. Efforts to solicit content for the newsletter have accelerated over the past year.

SIGOPS continues to fund special issues of the Transactions On Computer Systems (TOCS) and was involved in the selection of the new Editor-in-Chief. Discussions have begun with the ACM Pubs Board on the issue of "referreed" status for some of our more rigorously reviewed and shepherded conferences. USENIX has recently instituted "refereed" tracks at its conferences. Official recognition of the value of conferences in our field would especially benefit young academics in systems.

Key Issues of Concern for Next 2-3 Years

There are two other major organizations that serve the Operating Systems research community, namely USENIX and the IEEE Technical Committee on Operating Systems (TCOS). It is important to avoid a competition for members within the operating systems community. The health of SIGOPS depends around nurturing various avenues for cooperation with these organizations.

SIGOPS has formed a good working relationship with USENIX by co-sponsorship of OSDI. Currently, USENIX holds the copyrights, while SIGOPS sends the printed proceedings to its membership as a Special Issue of OSR. This arrangement has been successful, but with the growing importance of the ACM Digital Library, it seems unfortunate to be precluded from offering SIGOPS members access to the OSDI proceedings on-line. Discussions have begun with USENIX about possible reciprocal relationships for access to each other's DL content. USENIX members could benefit from access to SOSP proceedings in the ACM DL and SIGOPS members could benefit from access to OSDI and possibly the USENIX Technical Conferences in the USENIX DL. The major challenge to realizing this opportunity appears to be at the ACM level. Resolving this issue is important for the continued high degree of cooperation, rather than competition, between SIGOPS and USENIX.

TCOS sponsors the HOTOS workshop. This year, SIGOPS approved a request for the use of our mailing list to publicize HOTOS and published their Call for Papers in the Operating Systems Review. We expressed an interest in future formal co-sponsorship. Pursuing this opportunity for cooperation should be of benefit to both organizations. The new leadership of TCOS has strong ties to SIGOPS so it appears to be a good time to move forward on strengthening this relationship.

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SIGOPS FY'99 Annual Report. Last Update: 8/30/99 by Rachael Barish