Novel tried holding a Hack Week, and Ars Technica spoke with Novell’s chief open-source strategy officer, Nat Friedmam about it.  It involves Novel employees temporarily abandoning their current projects in favour of a free form week of writing open source software.  Letting a bunch of programmers creativity loose was intended not only as stress relief, but also a chance to let the programmers work on projects that they would otherwise have difficulty justifying to their bosses.

We’ve also just posted the 8th PC Perspective podcast, with a lot of news on processors, prizes, price cuts and Ponds!
“During Novell Hack Week, hundreds of skilled developers employed by Novell at various facilities around the world worked together on open-source projects of their choice. Driven by creativity and passion instead of deadlines, instructions, and executive decisions, Novell’s best and brightest created impressive new software and added innovative improvements to existing programs. In order to facilitate collaboration with the broader open-source software community, Novell sought to make Hack Week as transparent and inclusive as possible. Developers used Novell’s OpenSUSE Idea Pool wiki to share their ideas with community and solicit feedback.”

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