• I am not part of the Ubuntu community beyond a user. I also use Red Hat, Suse, PalmOS and Microsoft Windows. Once upon a time I ran Fedora, IRIX, MacOSX, DOS, *BSD and Solaris too but those days are mostly beyond me. Nor am I on the payroll of Cannonical.
• I consume massive amounts of technology therefore I could be outside the 80% that Nick is talking about. My career as a system administrator for the past 10 years has been mostly working in environments that are not effected by bug one.  Therefore, I will have to look outside my comfort zone.
• Bug one discusses the desktop market, but computing is larger than that. Microsoft has a whole suite of products in many markets: the console video gaming market, mapping, embedded, home media, high performance computing... I can't finish this list tonight! This blog will be about finding out what markets Microsoft is a part of and how well they are doing.
• Despite the previous bullet, I assert that Microsoft lacks market share in all that it attempts except for two areas: 1. desktop (laptop and a PC on your desk) 2. office suites applications. If you can think of an area where Microsoft excells, respond and I'll look into it.
• If you don't want to read this discussion, you can unfriend me and I will understand. On the other hand, if you are a user of computing resources who wants to have an intelligent discussion, then you will be allowed to post a comment even if you are not a friend.  I'm starting this by allowing all comments, even unauthenticated users. If that turns out to be too spammy I might reconsider.

Moose is a pioneer in the two computing causes that she holds dear:

1. OpenAFS

and

2. The League of Professional System Administrators - LOPSA

Moose got her start working with AFS and computer support in 1988 when she worked for Carnegie Mellon as a computer operator. There she was exposed to a file systems and system tool projects which were then called Vice, Virtue, and Venus. The Vice project was renamed to Andrew which was renamed to Andrew File Systems. For almost 20 years, she worked for Carnegie Mellon as a professional system administrator with expertise in AFS. Over the years she supported AFS as it grew from a University skunkworks, to an IBM product, and into a thriving open source file system. Today, Moose is an advocate for the use of OpenAFS. She has presented OpenAFS at SCALE and the Ohio Linuxfest. In addition, she keeps the peace on the OpenAFS mailing list and answers questions on OpenAFS administration and support issues.

Moose is also a founding member of The League of Professional System Administrators. She is a system administrator by choice and takes great pleasure training junior system administrators. Her areas of interest are ethics, documentation, training, and advocacy. She currently serves on the education committee and has been involved in coordinating many training days and workshops for system administrators and programmers. Moose also is involved in the leadership committee who vets perspective board members for LOPSA.

Moose is a very generous person. She is most generous knowledge sharing and her time. Her work is mostly behind the scenes and helping others shine. For this reason, she has been an unsung heroine in computing.

I met Moose in 1999 while interning at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. Even though she was not my manager, her leadership meant a lot to me. Without strong female role models early in my career such as Moose, I am not sure if I would have stayed with system administration as a profession. Her courage continues to be an inspiration to me today.