Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

The sorry saga of SAGE and LOPSA

I've long had an interest in system administration as a profession. Over the years, the business of keeping computers running has changed from being a part-time job that someone would do in their spare time as part of a more general system programming task to a profession in its own right. As it has developed into a profession, various bodies have sprung up to cater for the growing numbers of professional sysadmins.

For many years now, the USENIX Association has had a Special Technical Group (a semi-autonomous entity within USENIX) called SAGE - the System Administrator's Guild. SAGE has been successful in its own quiet way, and has spawned several SAGE groups in countries other than the US. SAGE-AU is highly active in Australia, while the UK's SAGE-WISE has been more dormant of late. I blame the name, which I believe I may have coined (WISE = Wales, Ireland, Scotland, England) and for which I grovellingly apologise.

Over the last couple of years, SAGE itself has been more or less paralysed by a plan, encouraged by the board of USENIX, to split away from USENIX and become an independent entity in its own right. This has been the subject of much politicking, and the activities of SAGE have been largely dominated by talk of Boards and Committees and Bye-Laws and the like. To a random member like me, it suddenly seemed like the membership dues I was paying were going to support a bureaucracy rather than an organisation that actually did anything beneficial to the field of system administration. This was particularly relevant to me, as many of the benefits of being a SAGE member were effectively unavailable to me as I was outside the US and therefore unlikely to be able to attend the conferences which USENIX/SAGE sponsored. Membership to me was more a mark of solidarity with my profession as a whole, and after some thought earlier this year I decided to hold off on renewing until it became apparent that SAGE was going to regain some functionality after the seemingly neverending upheavals. My SAGE membership has now been expired for many months.

More recently, just as things seemed to be settling down and the separation process seemed to be on course for a peaceful transition to an independent SAGE, there was a dramatic change of position by the USENIX board, which narrowly voted not to accept the plan for the separation of SAGE. This was seen as a bewildering betrayal by many rank and file members of SAGE. The separation was, it seemed, dead in the water, and despite dissenting views from other board members USENIX President Mike Jones made very clear that he, at least, considered this to be the state of things. Not only that, but USENIX was no longer interested in transferring any resources at all to the new organisation. As I'm sure you'll appreciate this caused mucho controversy, divers alarums, and lots of flamage on the sage-members list.

In a further twist, yesterday the board of the newSAGE organisation announced the formation of a new organisation - LOPSA, the League of Professional System Administrators. Henceforth, they would be putting their efforts into this new organisation, and while they would still be happy to talk to USENIX.. well, it's unlikely that there's going to be much of a reconciliation on the cards. Many people are saying this is a good thing, and a new baseline from which to move forward.

I don't agree. This schism, after the last years of politicking and deliberation and bureaucracy, is the worst possible outcome for anyone wishing to see an organisation dedicated to the advancement of system administration as a profession. Too much has been invested in the SAGE name in the past for people to simply decide to throw their toys out of the pram, form a new organisation, and expect everybody to follow them. Now there are two organisations for me not to see the point of being a member of, rather than just one. I'm worried that LOPSA is going to be hamstrung with yet more obsession with procedure and bureaucracy for the foreseeable future, and I can't yet see any compelling reason why I should currently want to be a member of USENIX, SAGE or LOPSA.

The problem is in the top-down nature of both organisations. You don't get anywhere by appointing a board before you've achieved anything else. System administration is basically a hands-on profession, and the grass roots of system administration are more interested in action than in yet more months of administrative paralysis. The last two years have shown just how dysfunctional this model can be, and I don't see it improving too much under a newly-formed LOPSA - at least, not for the time being.

A lighter touch is needed. As a fast-moving, responsive profession, I believe system administrators everywhere would be better served by the encouragement of far greater grass-roots participation in the life and development of the profession. Networks of local groups are the way to go. They don't have to be big local groups, and they don't have to be all that local, but local, in-person activities and support networks are going to deliver a lot more to the average sysadmin than one over-arching body declaring itself to be representative of system administration as a whole and expecting other activities to flow downwards from there. With the ubiquity of the Internet, an umbrella organisation need not really be anything more than a support organisation which is able to make use of resources and economies of scale which are out of reach to smaller, local bodies.

What professional representation for system administrators needs is a participatory, loosely federal structure rather than a top-heavy bureaucracy. I'm sorry to have to say this - I was a member of SAGE for several years - but after the last couple of years I really have come to believe that the existing organisations have decayed far too far to have much to offer the average sysadmin. The only real hope is for local and regional groups to start organising themselves and working together to provide support, development activities and professional representation for the system administration community. Encouraging this sort of activity will deliver far, far more in the area of actual tangible benefits than just unilaterally launching what is, after all, basically a rebadged SAGE and expecting everything to be made better that way.

I've found this whole business to be profoundly depressing, to be honest. While I wish LOPSA all the very best and fervently hope that it is a success, I can't help but feel extremely pessimistic based on the total shambles of the last few years. I wish everybody involved well, but if half the effort that has been put into politics and bureaucracy over the last two years had been put into supporting and encouraging the development of locally accessible, practical support for current and would-be sysadmins, the overall picture would look much different.

(Final note: I certainly don't mean the above to imply that I don't think there's any place for organisations like LOPSA. There most certainly is, and if I could find it in me to be anything but almightily depressed about the whole situation I'd be delighted to do anything I can to help, but now I can't think of much I actually can do. I just think that the enthusiastic encouragement of local groups is going to do more for the development of system administration as a profession, at least in the present climate.)

Posted by mpk at November 15, 2005 10:30 PM