inside aebrahim’s head

As a matter of pure coincidence, yesterday while I was renewing ebrahim.org’s domain registration, I noticed that ebrahim.org turns six years old today. Six years is a long time, especially in the internet world, where it’s an eternity.

When I first registered ebrahim.org back in 1999, I knew nothing about web or email hosting. On the recommendation of a friend, I bought ebrahim.org and purchased one POP account from Network Solutions, my first domain name registrar. I also had a one page “Under Construction” website at www.ebrahim.org (then, now). Things have come quite a way since then. I now host with a real hosting company, use ebrahim.org to host email for my family members, and also for this blog.

Every year the University of Chicago’s Networking Services and Information Technology department (NSIT) distributes a connectivity package (CP) to all incoming students. This CP is also used by departments throughout the university. The CP, amongst other things, contains a web browser and an email client.

Starting this fall, all incoming students will receive a CP that is built around Firefox and Thunderbird. This means that any student who pops NSIT’s CP into their computer to set up university email services will have Firefox and Thunderbird installed on their computer! The same CP is also likely to be targeted at university departments for new deployments.

I graduated from UChicago last year, and it’s great to see my alma mater supporting and taking advantage of open source projects in this manner. UChicago is fortunate to have a group of people working at NSIT who understand the value that open source projects can offer them.