[c2k8]: The Edmonton French Connection

"So, since none of the frogs stood up to write something about the EFC, I will endure this burden. Of course, as frogs are very proud of themselves, I will play the role of the interviewer and the interviewee, I don't want "surprise" questions."

              (breeding amphibians in the OpenBSD project)
             /
     (o)--(o)
    /.______.\
    \________/
   ./        \.
  ( .        , )
   \ \_\\//_/ /
    ~~  ~~  ~~

"First, I should say that if you're after interesting or worthwhile readings then you should just stop right now before hurting your eyes. You should also know that many insects were injured and eaten in the process of writing this article.

That said, let's get on with the interview...

Q. So, can you tell us a bit more about this "EFC" anyway?

A. Well, EFC stands for the Edmonton French Connection. It is an all-for-profit organisation which has nothing to do with Edmonton.

Q. Who can join this organisation?

A. Well, we have "volonteer" members, and "kidnapped" members. Volonters must be French and have the IQ of a frog. Kidnapped members are... well... those unfortunate people who got trapped by volonteers against their will. Several examples come to mind: Stuart Henderson (sthen@) had to share the EFC table at c2k8 and was kidnapped "de facto". Tobias Stoeckmann (tobias@) had to share a car trip with the entire EFC for several hours... listening to Radio Quebec and Country Music... so he also got his membership whether he wanted it or not... (if you wonder why, just listen to Radio Quebec).

Q. What is the purpose of this organisation?

A. As with every organisation, our goal is to get more powerful. For this, we bet mostly on "kidnapped" members.

Q. Yes, but "more powerful" to do what?

A. Hmm... I'm not sure I understand the question...

Q. Alright. What will you gain in being more powerful? What will you use this "power" for?

A. Nothing! We just want to gain more power over and over! I mean, do you ask a WoW player why he wants to be level 60? No reason... just fun! Although, Pierre-Yves Ritchards (pyr@) is working on getting us EFC uniforms so that people can recognize us and (hopefully) offer us free beer which does seem like a nice goal for this organisation :-)

Q. But isn't there anything the EFC is better at than others???

A. Oh but of course there is! We tend to be very good at: being rude, not washing, talk very bad English, stay together and not talk with others, leave cheese in hackrooms for days and blame the local pollution for the smell... Also, we are part of the International Baconator Eaters League.

Q. What did you do in Edmonton?

A. We did a pretty good job at bringing alcohol ("Chartreuse", a delicious liquor made from Carthusian Monks... which has the dangerous effect to make you want to use Ubuntu because your fingers aren't quite usable as they used to be), complaining about junk food and beer quality. We also enjoyed watching our football team losing with great honors against otto@'s team. But, more surprisingly, we also did a pretty good job at porting : eric@ spent a whole week porting 'the thing from the man who doesn't wash out' (namely e...s22), and landry@ made some progress on some useless big beasts like 'miro democracy player', which depends on at least half of the existing python ports, only to play stupid internet videos. pyr@ spent most of the time demangling yp code and annoying his direct neighbors with ldap testing and setups. landry@ was also hacking under /usr/src (strtof(3)) which made all the people around the table very uncomfortable while ajacoutot@ was trying to sysmerge(8) a Baconator he had for lunch into his stomach.

Of course some more code came out of the EFC, but mtu@ is already taking care of disclosing all the needed information in his wonderful c2k8 articles.

Hackathons are some of the most interesting, fun, learning, productive... times of the year. It allows tadpoles to evolve to grown up frogs!

If some readers didn't get the point of this article, let me summarize it this way: BIG THANK YOU to the OpenBSD project, its contributors, its users and its donors for allowing us to do what we like the best: having fun while hacking!"