
OpenBSD hackathons - jorgecastillo
http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html
======
gnuvince
OpenBSD hackathons are why I'm so bummed by the corporate-sponsored
"hackathons" that are often organized at my university: instead of improving a
major open source project that is of use to everyone (including people in
academia), it's mostly about "please test our API and show us the cool thing
we could build with it". I absolutely adore the focus that OpenBSD hackathons
have and how they benefit the whole community.

~~~
openbsd42
Yep. OpenBSD practically invented the concept of a hackathon as a way of
bringing together their distributed developer base to work together on OpenBSD
in a convivial atmosphere.

Then entryist tech companies co-opted the concept to get programmers to work
for free on their platforms, and in some cases to even pay money (in the form
of an entry or registration fee) for the privilege of doing so.

Sure, they provide pizza and dangle some prizes in front of the participants,
but the judging is seldom objective, and the winners are all too often
connected in some way to the event sponsor.

~~~
pgeorgi
Sun introduced the techcorp use of 'Hackathon' at about the same time as
OpenBSD ran theirs (Java One and OpenBSD Hackathon both in June 1999).

It was probably a coincidence, no attempt at co-opting anything.

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openbsd42
[http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html](http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html)

No YC, no Sequoia, no Andreessen Horowitz or other major VC, despite VC-backed
companies often using OSS exclusively, and VCs being awash in cash and likely
also being clued-in enough to actually realize just how much they rely on OSS:
[http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Marc-Andreessen-The-
Clock...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Marc-Andreessen-The-Clock-Is-
Ticking-On-Oracle-2303787.php)

~~~
Muted
I'm actually surprised how small and how few donations there are from big
companies. Especially since donations to openssh (and libressl) also seem to
go through the openbsd foundation. IIRC Facebook and stripe are each giving
$50k/year to the gpg project. No big tech company other than Microsoft is
donating more than $25k to openbsd foundation (unless there are other means of
donating that I'm missing).

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occam65
I love the focus on a particular topic or theme. "Reduce code fat!" for
example. I've been to far too many general hackathons where the scope was so
broad that the productivity of the hackathon itself was minimal, or even zero.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Is the goal of those broad hackathons not to encourage new ideas rather than
make bulk progress on a pre-defined roadmap?

~~~
d33
The question is though: would you prefer a) a half-baked feature where coding
is 1/10th of the effort and you're still left with 9/10th of the work for the
maintainer/community or b) a small, but undeniable improvement?

~~~
TallGuyShort
OpenBSD would obviously prefer the latter, but other hackathons are sometimes
for the purpose of just generating new ideas or getting new people involved -
in those cases broad scope is good and intentional.

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darkengine
I'd kill for one of those UTF-8 shirts.

[http://www.openbsd.org/images/hackathons/u2k15.gif](http://www.openbsd.org/images/hackathons/u2k15.gif)

~~~
neeels
I made it, inspired by stsp, while frying in the sun at the
[https://events.ccc.de/camp/2015](https://events.ccc.de/camp/2015)

I (still) dearly hope none of the foreign glyphs say anything that I don't
like ... that would be by accident.

Can you spot a pile of poo? ;)

~~~
stsp
Hi neeels :)

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brynet
Well.. if you enjoyed the hackathon artwork.

[http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html](http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html)

~~~
crudbug
Hacker culture personified. Programming / Hacking is art and with songs and
logos for each release it makes this more creative.

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liveoneggs
openbsd has great art

------
systems
the canadian os

~~~
andersen1488
the B stands for Berkeley, California

~~~
systems
theo is canadian, and lives in calgary

