[lug] I've seen it happen

[Ian S. Nelson]

Okay, I went to ALS and returned before it started (I've gotta go back
to work and make money for The Man)

Anyhow, I want to start this thread. I just did Loki hack!
(http://209.223.115.151/hack/  check us out.. the camera was broken so
no digital pictures)

it was a great experience, I only got about 6 hours of sleep the whole
time so I was a little unstable by the end but first, there is an
immense amount of talent in the Linux community, absolutely incredible.
I think this is something that get's overlooked by the RMS and ESR types
quite often.  I'm about as computer nerd as they come and I felt average
or slightly above average in this crowd.  That's not something I say
easily, I have literally been programming computers most of my life.  In
addition, I didn't meet anyone other than Eric Raymond who was very
abrasive, and ESR wasn't really abrasive so much as just a little on the
disagreeable side.  Being as how they were giving out prizes, it was an
amazingly communal and collaborative group, very refreshing to see.

Second, they gave us this pile of spegetti and within 6 hours stuff was
getting done.  If lokihack lasted 72 hours there would have been some
incredible results because all could have done a polish down.
Regardless,  they should have filmed the whole thing and put a team of
researchers to work on it, I watched opensource happen in realtime!
I work at IBM and if that code was given to my team, there is no way it
would have been understood in 6 weeks, let alone 6 hours and I work on a
"powerful team," as mgmt has said. (nothing against any of my team mates
at work, they just aren't hackers)

I've been using linux for close to 6 years now, I'm always amazed at
things like GIMP, GNOME, KDE and all the great work being done but there
is always some doubt somewhere in me about what a community of loosely
associated programmers can do.  I just watched 18 guys (booo, no grrl
hackers were invited) make order out of chaos (activision's code was
chaos) and then enhance it and a lot of them were useful and nice
looking changes.  We're going to win.  It doesn't matter what happens to
MS with the anti-trust or dos2000.  It's going to happen.

Also, if you're a gamer, buy some games from Loki.  They are great guys
and their games are really really good, as good as the windows versions
if not better.  And they are going to get even better because we've
forumlated a memory leak removal plan for Civ... and I watch the
president of the company give that work to one of the workers, kind of
felt bad about that.  Totally committed to the cause, they are going to
go back to Activision and try again to open up the source code to Civ,
now they have "proof."

Anyhow, I just wanted to say I had a great time and more importantly say
that opensource/freedomware/whatever is the way.  I watched it work.  I
don't know that there are limits or goals inthe consumer software space
where opensource cannot win right now.

Ian Nelson


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