Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

that he did it only to put leaks into his competitors' boats; but the very absurdity ofthat statement underlined the difference between this industry and others. Insteadof sabotaging competitors. Ken Williams would forge his way through fiercewaters alongside them.The river was idyllic, but one participant later explained to a reporter that evenmore idyllic than the isolated pine-treed and high-canyon-walled setting was thefeeling among the adventurers, who of course swapped all sorts of product,technological, and financial information: "We all sort of feel like we beat thesystem: we got to microcomputers before IBM did. We're all competitors but welike to cooperate."Even the boatmen had to tell the participants, which included the heads of over sixsoftware firms, like Ken and Roberta, or the Carlstons, or Steve Dompier (theHomebrew member who was independently writing software now that ProcessorTech was out of business) to stop talking shop. Sometimes they did stop. Theystopped at the end of the ride as they approached the last rapid. Not for the firsttime, Ken Williams rammed his raft into someone else's. Some people on that rafttumbled onto another one, and people from all ten rafts used their paddles andbuckets to splash one another, and the Brotherhood exploded in a mist of whitewater, laughter, and thrilling camaraderie.