Panel on the contributions of the DISC community to distributed computing: a historical perspective

This panel discussed the contributions of the DISC community to distributed computing. The panelists (Eli Gafni, Jan van Leeuwen, Nicola Santoro, Shmuel Zaks) and the moderator (Michel Raynal) were the members of the program committee of the second DISC (called WDAG at that time), held in Amsterdam. At the very beginning, WDAG was centered mainly on distributed algorithms on graphs. Subsequently, while keeping its main focus on distributed algorithms, WDAG evolved and adopted a more general view of the research area, changed its name and became DISC. In a continuous manner, new topics have always appeared in the DISC call for papers (and also in accepted papers!). These include ubiquitous computing, cryptography, autonomic computing to name only a few. The scientific DISC contributions are numerous. They are on distributed computing models, algorithm design, complexity, possibility/impossibility results, distributed computability, lower bounds, etc. The panel reviewed the status of many contributions to network protocol design and to the understanding of distributed computing in general. It also discussed the possible ways in which DISC may evolve in the future.