A Brief History of Linux in Israel
From Hackers-IL
Contents |
Forward
Israel has been a Capitalistic, prosperous country for a long time. While it has many problems, it is relatively peaceful, has an abundant food supply, fast transportation (automobiles, trains, airplanes, and ships), a high level of literacy, a high level of foreign languages knowledge (especially English, which is mandatory at Israeli schools), a large (albeit relatively poor) middle class, and a large industry. It is a good place to live in, and most people are happy here.
Being a lawful country, copyright law is observed. Many legitimate copies of books, compact discs, DVDs, video cassettes, and other types of Media are sold in Israel daily. The vast majority of businesses and public organizations, including small ones, make sure to consistently buy and use legitimate licenses of the software they deployed there. Home computer users are usually less concerned of making sure the copies of the software they are holding, are not illegally copied and used, but software vendors tend not to try to enforce use of their software among the home users.
The Pre-Linux-IL Years
Israel has been a heavily computerized country for many years. AT&T UNIX and the BSDs, and later the various System V-based UNIXes have seen wide deployment in universities and other organizations, for powering powerful computers (mainframes or mini-computers) for purposes for which the personal computers of that age were under-powered. Israel also developed a culture of modem Bulletin Board Services, and universities also connected themselves to the Internet eventually. There was one (and only one) Israeli Internet ISP called Dataserve (now out of business) which joining it was restricted.
Most of the Israeli personal computers were x86-clones. For a long time before Windows 3.x came about, a great deal of them were even XT computers.
As GNU/Linux emerged in 1992/3, it became popular among some Israelis, as an affordable UNIX that they could run on their personal computers. This had set the timing for the first serious Israeli Linux and Open Source activity - the Linux-IL mailing list.
The Linux-IL Mailing List
Linux-IL was founded by Harvey J. Stein, to host discussions of Linux users. It was hosted by the Hebrew University's computer science department, which still hosts it now, and after a while archived at the archive of the Weizmann's institute Plasma-Gate server.
The Linux-IL community had exercised several manners. Among the unfortunate ones were the fact that beginner questions were frowned upon and those who asked them were often replied with flames, and that questions regarding other UNIX-like operating systems were also frowned upon. Nevertheless, Linux-IL was still a favourite of many people and a good source for help.
For a long time, the mailing list has coordinated community meet-ups and lectures, thus becoming a sort of an Israeli-wide LUG (= Linux User Group). In January 2000, a LUG was officially formed. The first name for the name of the LUG in Israel that became popular was ILUG meaning Israeli Linux User Group. However, eventually it was decided to reject it because the pronouncation had bad connotations in Hebrew. Instead, the name IGLU, (sounds like "Igloo") short for Israeli Group of Linux Users (or sometimes Israeli GNU/Linux Usergroup) was called for and eventually widely accepted.
The early Linux-IL usergroup had many leaders, experts and participants. Ira Abramov, however, became the most dominant, and was widely considered the IGLU benevolent dictator. Ira maintained the www.linux.org.il server, which carried various mirrors of open-source software and distributions, the Linux-IL FAQ list and other resources.
Physical meeting of the Linux-IL crowd were quite rare. Most of them were the so-called "Linux-IL dinners", in which people gathered to eat and talk about Linux. This tradition was initiated by Viktorie (Viki) Navratilova, an American exchange student who joined the Linux-IL ranks, and imported this custom to Israel from her LUG in Chicago.
The Haifa Linux Club
Linux installation parties have been held in the Technion semi-annually or annually for a long time, by Linux veterans such as Nir Simionovich, Shachar Tal, and Arik Baratz. In August 1999, the Haifa Linux Club was started by Orr Dunkelman (then a B.Sc. student for Computer Science in the Technion) and Guy Keren (a Technion Computer Science Alumnus, who was working as a UNIX software developer at the time). The unique thing about the Haifa Linux Club (or Haifux for short) was that it held bi-weekly presentations about Linux subjects. These presentations have been often referred to as "lectures", in the grand tradition of Israeli High Education.
At first, Guy gave the lion's share of the lectures. After a while, however, many other presenters became active and gave lectures of their own. There have been a few breaks in activity, but otherwise the club seems very healthy. At one point it had a queue of over 6 months into the future.
Eventually, it was decided that it may be a good idea to perform series intended for inducing people into using Linux. These were eventually called "Welcome-to-Linux" (or W2L for short). These series were held with a lot of success. Another successful tradition were the Linux Installation Parties (or Insta-Parties, or Install-fests), which were held at first semi-annually and then annually.
What the Haifux experience has taught us is that frequent Real Life activities are essential for the growth and prosperity of a local open-source community. The Haifa Linux Club has been the first such club in Israel, and is still considered one of the most active.
Other things that took place there were:
- An active mailing list dedicated to discussing all sorts of stuff.
- A web-site which among else contains most of the slides and presentation material for the presentations.
- Several communal software projects. These are projects that have been initiated and maintained by the Haifux members. The most successful one was Syscalltrack, a framework for tracing System Calls in the Linux Kernel.
iglu.org.il Server News
The linux.org.il server has seen several incarnations. The first contained some rudimentary content and some mirrors (including a mirror of the ibiblio Linux archive.) After a crash the site was restored in a rudimentary state, and afterwads, Shlomi Fish and Omer Mussaev designed a nice-looking web-page. After that, the HTML was heavily modified. Eventually, a server was dedicated to it (without a lot of mirroring space) and Chen Shapira installed an installation of Zope with Squishdot, a Zope-based calendar and other modules. This was used to serve as the homepage of the Israeli Linux community with a Slashdot-like news page. In this form, it was probably the most active Open-Source community site for quite a long time in Israel.
Eventually, a newer server with much larger disk-space (70 GB) was donated for the machine. The server-maintenance crew transferred the Zope installation there and also started mirroring some important Linux download sources. The new server was administered by Ira Abramov and Chen Shapira, with increasing help from other people. A Job tracker was deployed by Shlomi Fish, and later on also a tracker for paid consultants.
A new domain, iglu.org.il was bought due to some limitations imposed by the owner of the linux.org.il domain. These domains used to be aliases, but now point to different sites, where www.linux.org.il is a Hebrew portal that directs people to the other sites.
More Sites
Some people who were unhappy about the English-only nature of www.iglu.org.il and started their own news hosts whose chief language was Hebrew. The notable sites were Whatsup, Penguin.org.il and Linmagazine. Another site in Hebrew with Linux-related content (but not limited to Linux) was Guides.co.il. This is without taking into account the Hebrew-speaking Linux-related web forums that were hosted on Walla, Tapuz, Nana, Ynet, and so forth.
The advancement of Hebrew supporting browsers on Linux, (first Konqueror and then the Hebrew supporting version of Mozilla) enabled Linux users to surf and interact with Hebrew sites.
Dictatorless (and Free)
As time went by the responsibilities in the admins of the iglu.org.il domain and the Linux community were divided among several members where each took care of his or her own domain. This made sure that the community did not have a "benevolent dictator" model that is very prevalent among open-source projects and communities. Ever since then, the Israeli Linux community has been lead by a heterogeneous leadership, without a visible benevolent dictator.
While some sub-sections of the community have a dictator or an unofficial leader, the Israeli open-source community as a whole lacks a global dictator.
August Penguin I
When the movie Revolution OS came out, and many people wanted to view it, some active members of the community organized a screening and sold tickets to it. The event was dubbed August Penguin and was a huge success. The theatre hall that was rented for the screening was packed, and everybody had a good time.
"August Penguin" has become a yearly tradition since then. Furthermore, the event motivated some people to form an Israeli Not-for-Profit-Organization (NPO). This NPO was named Ha'makor after the Hebrew word for "The Source". As of this writing (April 2005) this NPO consists of between 100 and 200 friends and members, and serves as a legal and financial representation of the Israeli Free Software and Open Source community.
Recent Developments
Richard M. Stallman paid a visit to Israel in Early 2002. The organizers organized a very large event in which Stallman was the main attraction. However, Dr. Stallman failed to arrive in time due to plane problems, but was able to attend a community dinner given later that evening, as well as some later events of smaller scale.
Another Hebrew Israeli portal was started - Linmagazine.co.il. This site hosts news (and comments on news), weblogs, and other content.
The past years have seen the development of three new local Linux clubs in Israel: the Tel Aviv Linux Club (or Telux), the Jerusalem Linux Club (JLC or Jerux), and the Bar-Ilan Linux Club (or BIUX). This clubs provide lectures and other social meetings to Linux enthusiasts close to their home.
August Penguin II was quite successful, but August Penguin III which was heavily publicized was an even more tremendous success than the previous events.
A Business-oriented Linux forum was initiated by People & Computers and other interested parties. So far it organized two annual Linux conferences entitled "Go-Linux", which proven to be very successful.
