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A farewell to LWN

[LWN subscriber-only content]

    Welcome to LWN.net

    The following subscription-only content has been made available
    to you by an LWN subscriber. Thousands of subscribers depend on
    LWN for the best news from the Linux and free software
    communities. If you enjoy this article, please consider
    subscribing to LWN. Thank you for visiting LWN.net!

By Rebecca Sobol
December 22, 2021
Back at the beginning of 2020, it was predicted that retirements
would increase during this decade. In 2021, the prediction was that
retirements would increase over the next couple of years. It is
happening and LWN is no exception. I am retiring at the end of this
year after more than 20 years with LWN.

So who am I and how did I get here? To some, I'm a name at the bottom
of some LWN page. To a few, I'm the one that reminds them when their
LWN group subscription is about to expire. You might have even met me
at a conference. Not that I have been to very many. Mostly I tend to
be quietly in the background watching the LWN mailbox, looking for
brief items and quotes of the week (sorry I haven't found much
lately), proofreading articles, managing subscriptions, and more. But
I'm older than most of you and this is my last LWN weekly edition.
Getting here is a bit of story.

I got my first paying job in 1968 when I was in my late teens. It had
nothing to do with computers. It was 10 years later when I decided to
study computers and programming. After graduating from high school I
had various, low-paying odd jobs, until finally I was ready for more
education. I started going to Colorado Mountain College, located near
Glenwood Springs, in the mid-1970s. I took a lot of math and physics
classes, skied in the winter, and rafted the Colorado River in the
summer. Just before I graduated in 1978, I had a class where one
assignment was to write a program in BASIC. I forget what kind of
computer it was; an early type of PC that belonged to one of the
professors. It was my first encounter with programming a computer and
I wanted to learn more; something that could lead to a real career.

I decided to take a year off and then go to the University of
Colorado (CU) and study computers. If I had any doubts about that
decision, they were quenched after spending the winter shoveling snow
in the little ski resort town of Snowmass Village. One week the high
temperature was -20 F. Another week it snowed so much that all I did
was shovel the same staircase over and over and couldn't keep up.
Cold and snow was replaced by spring cleanup, when the snow melts
away and reveals lots of trash and lost items; the $100 bill was a
nice find, but mostly it's picking up trash. Then the boss offered me
a job as a manager and in the conversation that followed he told me
"no woman in the world is worth $5/hour, ever". While the two summers
spent working for the Snowmass Village golf course were more pleasant
and I did get a raise to $5/hour before I left, I wanted a better
paying office job for the future.

Thus, in fall 1979, I moved to Boulder and started at CU, where I met
Jon Corbet in our first computer class. We used punch cards and
programmed in Pascal on the school's CDC mainframe. A couple of years
later, we met Liz Coolbaugh, LWN's other founder, in an
assembly-language programming class, using the mainframe. By this
time, Jon had a printer terminal and a modem, so we did our
assignments with reams of printer paper. I also worked on a project
where I got access to a VAX 11/780 running Berkeley Unix and learned
some Fortran.

After graduation, it was the Fortran that got me my first computer
job. They had an HP 1000 Minicompter and a lot of old Fortran code.
Over the years that followed there were other jobs where I learned
some C and worked on Unix systems. I was systems administrator for a
variety of computers with different operating systems, but these
computers were not networked. As a sysadmin, I applied updates, or
did fresh installs of some OS, backups, not much else. As programmer,
there was number crunching, of course. I also wrote things like
text-based user interfaces which interacted with databases that
someone else wrote. Nothing fancy and not any kind of systems
programming.

Around 1994, I got a job that came with an office and a Sun
Workstation running SunOS with the Motif Window Manager, fully
connected to the internet. I thought that was the best computer
environment ever. I didn't have root and I didn't really miss it. I
liked the Unix environment and the internet access, but one job led
to another, and while it still came with a Sun running Solaris,
eventually I was maintaining Fortran code. By the late 1990s I was
tired of maintaining Fortran code.

In the (northern hemisphere) spring of 1999, Liz offered me a
part-time job as her assistant at LWN. Eklektix, LWN's parent
company, was running Linux System Administration classes and I
attended one of the last of those classes. They were hauling around
workstations for the classes and I took one home after the class,
installed Red Hat Linux 5, and started working for LWN. Within a year
Eklektix was solely focused on LWN and I became a part owner of
Eklektix and a full-time employee; just in time for LWN to become a
wholly owned subsidiary of Tucows.

The company grew to several employees with Tucows paying salaries.
That lasted a little over a year before Tucows decided they didn't
want us after all. It was the dot-com boom and bust. It took some
time for Eklektix to become a private company once again and we were
without funding. We thought that was the end, but within a week
donations from our readers poured in. Until the credit card clearing
house decided that something fraudulent was going on and put a stop
to that. There were several lean months before we began the
transition to the subscription model. That worked and LWN is fully
funded by subscribers now.

Different people have come and gone from LWN over the years. Liz,
Dennis Tenney, Forrest Cook, and others worked for LWN at one time,
but moved on some years ago. Jake Edge joined 14+ years ago and now
he and Jon will be the only ones left to run LWN. I hear they will be
hiring.

I have enjoyed working for LWN, learning about free-software
development, without actually developing any software myself. I'm in
awe of the kernel community and what it has accomplished. Once it was
news if some company used Linux in some way. Now it's commonplace.
Linux has taken over the computing world. It's in supercomputers,
Android phones, the cloud, embedded devices; it is almost everywhere.
Thanks to you subscribers, LWN has been there to cover it. Back in
2002, when subscribing to LWN first became possible, I don't think we
imagined that some of the largest tech companies in the world would
have LWN group subscriptions.

So what's next? That remains to be seen. Once I thought programming
was my career of the future, but that turned out to be LWN instead.
Now retirement is unlikely to be quite what I imagine, but I'm
looking forward to the change in pace. I'll spend more time outdoors
when the weather is nice, choosing when to spend time outside based
on the weather forecast rather than LWN's publishing schedule. We'll
see about all those "I'll do this when I have more time" projects.

Thanks again to all LWN subscribers who helped make LWN the success
that it is and helped fund my retirement. Stay safe, have a good
holiday season, and a prosperous New Year.

[Send a free link]


-----------------------------------------
(Log in to post comments)

A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 16:13 UTC (Wed) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link
]

Thank you so much for everything you've done here over the years.
Your impact on Linux, the ecosystems around it, and on open source
and free software in general through this work is incalculably huge.

Enjoy what comes next!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 16:29 UTC (Wed) by grrrrrrrrrr (subscriber, #
133785) [Link]

Congratulations on your retirement, wishing you lots of happiness and
success in your future!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 16:30 UTC (Wed) by alejluther (subscriber, #5404)
[Link]

Thank for your work, Rebecca, and for your interesting farewell. I
love to read stories from the good old days :-).

You guys at LWN have been doing an incredible work all those 20 last
years.

Good luck!

[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 16:32 UTC (Wed) by psthomso (subscriber, #25577)
[Link]

Thank you for keeping this enterprise running, and best of luck on
whatever comes next!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 16:37 UTC (Wed) by bfallik (subscriber, #110063)
[Link]

Congrats and thanks for all your contributions over the years!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 16:44 UTC (Wed) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [
Link]

Thanks for all the hard work and chasing through a large amount to
chase things down over a full 20 years.
Very much appreciated by anyone needing a concise introduction to
what's where.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 16:44 UTC (Wed) by jimbo (subscriber, #6689) [
Link]

Ms Sobol: Best wishes for the future. I've come to rely on LWN for
information about Linux; thanks to you - and your colleagues - for
providing interesting and informative articles over the years. --
jimbo
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 16:51 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [
Link]

My heart skipped a beat when I read that headline; for a second, I
thought LWN itself was coming to an end!

But no, it's happy news, probably with a slightly bittersweet tinge.
Thanks for your work at LWN and I hope you have a wonderful
retirement.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 16:55 UTC (Wed) by MattBBaker (subscriber, #
28651) [Link]

I did too! Especially since I think I lived through a few 'Maybe the
end of LWN' before. The memory isn't what it used to be, so I maybe
hallucinating those. I blame the shock.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 17:53 UTC (Wed) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [
Link]

> My heart skipped a beat when I read that headline; for a second, I
thought LWN itself was coming to an end!

Yep, same here.

Thank you very much, Rebecca, and best wishes!

It is a very strange feeling to realize I directly contributed (even
in the most minuscule part) to the well-deserved retirement of
somebody.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 18:28 UTC (Wed) by cdamian (subscriber, #1271) [
Link]

Yes, that woke me up.

Thanks for your with Rebecca.
Everybody working on LWN has my respect.

[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 2:17 UTC (Thu) by gwolf (subscriber, #14632) [
Link]

    My heart skipped a beat when I read that headline; for a second,
    I thought LWN itself was coming to an end!

Same here! Thank you very much, Rebecca, for all the work poured in
one of the Internet's best ever information sources, and best luck
for the many years ahead!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 4:16 UTC (Thu) by synaxin (subscriber, #122012) [
Link]

The 3 stages of this post:

From fear that lwn was no more, to sadness that an OG was not going
to be here anymore, finishing with respect, admiration and
appreciation for all that you have done.

Congrats to you.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 5:18 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [
Link]

An eyeball grabber here too. I retired less than a year ago, found
some fun things to work on, and have little idea what I'll be doing
in a year. But I will always have my LWN subscription. Haven't
written system / kernel code in a few years, the last was for 8
bitters, and I satisfy my thirst by reading kernel articles. I hope
you at least got a lifetime subscription :-)
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 16:52 UTC (Wed) by neon_tadpole (subscriber, #
144922) [Link]

Best of luck in the future! Thanks for what you have done to make LWN
such a special place.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 17:03 UTC (Wed) by MattBBaker (subscriber, #
28651) [Link]

Congratulation and thanks for all the great work! It's been wild, I
first subscribed in 2005 and it's been wild watching things grow and
change.
It's been wild hasn't it? From excited that IBM ran a Linux
commercial during the Super Bowl to checking the Top500 list OS
Family, "Linux: 100%"
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 17:04 UTC (Wed) by mgk (subscriber, #74833) [Link
]

I appreciate you sharing your story, and wish you all the best with
what comes next.

M
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 17:46 UTC (Wed) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link
]

Thank you for your contribution! Wishing you the best going forward.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 17:46 UTC (Wed) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [
Link]

Wonderful to hear you are about to retire. Congratulations, and thank
you for all you've done for LWN!

Now, you can.....I don't know. I'm retired, and I seem to be busier
than ever..... !
[Reply to this comment]
Thanks: A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 17:57 UTC (Wed) by CurtBrune (subscriber, #88208)
[Link]

Sincere thanks for all your hard work over the years. Best of luck on
your next adventure.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 18:03 UTC (Wed) by cc (subscriber, #2356) [Link]

Wishing you a long and happy retirement and thanks for all your work
keeping us all informed over the years
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 18:03 UTC (Wed) by yash (subscriber, #137539) [
Link]

Happy Retirement! Hope it treats you well :)

Y
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 18:47 UTC (Wed) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266) [
Link]

Thanks for everything! Enjoy retirement!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 18:57 UTC (Wed) by JFlorian (subscriber, #49650)
[Link]

Rebecca, congratulations on a well deserved retirement and thank you
so much for service you have provided for so long. I'll miss hearing
from you every winter about subscription renewal. So much charm and
personal service in a world of tech automation. Thank you also for
this wonderful backstory of personal growth. As I near my own
retirement, and also as an outdoor enthusiast, I can totally relate
to this new process scheduler you're authoring. ;-)

Best wishes in your continued journey!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 18:59 UTC (Wed) by stewart (subscriber, #50665) [
Link]

Thank you for all of your work! I'm always in awe of what an amazing
impact LWN has had to those in the free software community and those
who benefit from it.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 19:08 UTC (Wed) by liinu (subscriber, #4087) [
Link]

Thank you for all your hard work and have a very nice and relaxing
retirement. You have the talent on explaining complex things in
language that anyone can understand. Hopefully we will see you
articles in the future. Don't stop writing.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 19:23 UTC (Wed) by flussence (subscriber, #85566)
[Link]

So long and thanks for all those years of curated back-page links!
They've sent me down many a fascinating rabbit hole.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 20:05 UTC (Wed) by del (subscriber, #380) [Link]

My wish is for better days ahead for all of us!. For you, Rebecca, do
take care! And be very proud of your contribution to this wonderful
publication!
Thanks, again thanks.

[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 20:06 UTC (Wed) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [
Link]

> Jake Edge joined 14+ years ago

OMG probably about time to stop thinking about him as "the new one"
;)

Congratulations and happy retirement!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 20:26 UTC (Wed) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [
Link]

So good to hear the voice of, and fitting to appreciate, one of the
more hidden people of LWN. Thank you for all your quiet and diligent
work over the years Rebecca, and all the very best for your future!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 20:44 UTC (Wed) by cdarroch (subscriber, #26812)
[Link]

Thank you so much for all your work over the years and for this fond
trip down memory lane! Best wishes for a happy retirement!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 22:37 UTC (Wed) by gren (subscriber, #3954) [Link
]

Thanks for being part of something that has been fabulous for years
and an entertaining trip down memory lane! All the best on the next
adventure.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 22, 2021 23:11 UTC (Wed) by Martin.Schwenke (subscriber, #
7764) [Link]

Congratulations and farewell! I hope you're able to do some of those
things when you have more time...
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 0:05 UTC (Thu) by antacon (subscriber, #138885) [
Link]

Great story and thanks for all your work, Rebecca. Good luck in
retirement.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 4:35 UTC (Thu) by salewski (subscriber, #121521)
[Link]

Thanks for all your work on LWN, Rebecca, and best wishes for your
retirement!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 6:12 UTC (Thu) by stsimb (subscriber, #805) [Link
]

Thank you, thank you, thank you, and may life treat you well for
whatever comes up next!
[Reply to this comment]
Thank you

Posted Dec 23, 2021 7:41 UTC (Thu) by pmoust (subscriber, #118848) [
Link]

Rebecca, as a LWN reader; thank you for everything.
Enjoy your retirement!

[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 8:13 UTC (Thu) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [
Link]

Thank you so much!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 8:40 UTC (Thu) by gfernandes (subscriber, #
119910) [Link]

Thank you, Rebecca, and wish you all the best!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 9:19 UTC (Thu) by kneth (subscriber, #5341) [Link
]

Thank you Rebecca for keep LWN running. Funny to see that our paths
almost crossed at some point (I was an exchange student at CU in 1996
- mostly programming in Fortran). LWN is an integral part of the free
software community and you made it happen. Have fun and stay safe in
beautiful Boulder.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 9:25 UTC (Thu) by ctg (subscriber, #3459) [Link]

Thank you! And enjoy the next phase! Less deadlines, more sunshine :D
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 10:25 UTC (Thu) by mces (subscriber, #27668) [
Link]

Thank you, Rebecca!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 10:49 UTC (Thu) by andreashappe (subscriber, #
4810) [Link]

Thank you for your work and enjoy your entirement (: my best wishes
to you, Andreas
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 10:56 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [
Link]

Thank you so much for the service you provided! I have always enjoyed
the quotes of the week and often felt the need to forward them to
colleagues and friends.

And thanks for ending your involvement in such an appropriate way and
with style. Wish you all the best and great fun with the "I'll do
this when I have more time" projects :)
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 12:33 UTC (Thu) by hubcapsc (subscriber, #98078)
[Link]

Vax 750s and 780s... Ultrix 1.0 (4.2 BSD tape with an orange
label)...
I remember coming into the Vax machine room at Clemson University
around 5am one morning to upgrade the SURAnet router... as I read
through the mimeographed upgrade instructions I saw that I was going
to need to to wire-wrap a couple of pins... fortunately I saw a
little piece
of wire on the floor in the corner I could use... thanks, Ms. Sobol,
for
all the subscription reminders and thanks for causing me to remember
the good old (youthful) days :) ...

-Mike
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 13:12 UTC (Thu) by tcabot (subscriber, #6656) [
Link]

Best wishes for a peaceful and fulfilling retirement in whatever form
it takes!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 15:11 UTC (Thu) by zmower (subscriber, #3005) [
Link]

Is the title after Hemmingway? Or Rush?

Happy retirement Rebecca.

[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 15:30 UTC (Thu) by gnu_lorien (subscriber, #
44036) [Link]

The briefs and quotes are one of my favorite things. You will be
missed! Enjoy whatever comes next in your life.
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 16:01 UTC (Thu) by randomguy3 (subscriber, #
71063) [Link]

Although of course I subscribe to LWN for its excellent articles, one
of the highlights every week has been the excellent selection of
quotes in the "briefs" section. Thank you for these, and all the work
you've been doing for LWN over the years.

Enjoy your well-deserved retirement!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 19:52 UTC (Thu) by warrax (subscriber, #103205) [
Link]

GGWPGL.

Have a great retirement!
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 19:59 UTC (Thu) by xxiao (subscriber, #9631) [
Link]

Thanks for all your contributions. LWN should be funded by Linux
Foundation in addition to subscribers to expand its influence.
[Reply to this comment]
Funding

Posted Dec 23, 2021 20:00 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Credit where it is due: the LF generously funded our travel to events
for years; that only ended when the travel did. If and when things
ever get better, we'll be knocking on their door again :)
[Reply to this comment]
A farewell to LWN

Posted Dec 23, 2021 20:26 UTC (Thu) by emj (subscriber, #14307) [Link
]

I was lucky to dance with Rebecca at a conference 17 years ago, only
after did I relize I had spent time with celebrity. Your time here
has ment a lot to many people! So don't slow down, continue on; have
a happy time!
[Reply to this comment]

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