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2006 OpenBSD Hackathon Well Underway

Posted by ryuzaki0 on

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap is running a two part who's who at the 2006 OpenBSD Hackathon. Starting on the 27th and running for a full week, developers get together and concentrate on communication rather than just development. Project leader Theo de Raadt was quoted as saying 'I don't think anybody else does this, developers suspend their lives for a week to focus entirely on just development.'"

7 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Pfft! A week?!? by OmegaBlac · · Score: 5, Funny
    Project leader Theo de Raadt was quoted as saying 'I don't think anybody else does this, developers suspend their lives for a week to focus entirely on just development.
    Tell that too the EA developers!
  2. Re:No one else does an -athon? by Toba82 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's not the point - what he was saying is that no other free software project actually has a meetup where they code in a setting that is, frankly, what closed source companies use 100% of the time.

    --
    I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
  3. Re:Yeah. by twistah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Look up the word "volunteer" in the dictionary.

  4. What about DebConf? by Roblimo · · Score: 5, Informative

    It seems to me that two weeks ago I was in Mexico at DebConf, which if you look at the official page, was preceded by a weeklong "DebCamp" that could just as easily been called a "hackathon," not to mention that probably 60% or more of the average attendee's time during the "main" DebConf week was spent in collaborative hacking. And DebConf had around 250 people there...

    I'm not knocking OpenBSD's hackathon, just pointing out that it's hardly unique. Many other FOSS projects have similar gatherings.

    1. Re:What about DebConf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah but OpenBSD hackathons usually produce things of great value. Others are just a communal handjob.

  5. Re:How is this useful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've never been to an OpenBSD hackathon either, but I think the theory is that when you are coding, you often might run into a problem where you'd like to consult someone else, and at the hackathon, an expert is right at the next table. No need to worry about lag from email/IM waiting for a response while another person has gone away for the day, or lives in a different time-zone, is busy working at their day-job, etc, etc.

  6. Meet the Hackathon by rbrander · · Score: 5, Informative

    For the second time (and we're hoping for an annual tradition) the Hackathon has agreed to come up for air long enough to give a talk to the Calgary Unix Users Group.

    This year, Bob Beck and Reyk Floeter will give a talk to the group and many Hackathon participants on their directions in wireless chipset support, advanced feature support, and security support.

    At SAIT, June 1, 6PM - all details at

    http://www.cuug.ab.ca/