OpenNL was announced on this website on July 11, 2000, and the first alpha 0.2 release was made available on August 3, 2000.  There was a flurry of comments in favor of this project.  People liked the idea of a cross platform game networking library written in C.  Version 0.3 was released days later on August 11, with version 0.4 to follow just a few weeks after that.

In all this activity it was suggested I register opennl.org for the permanent home of the project.  I had performed searches to make sure nobody was already using the name OpenNL before I  chose to use it, so  I was VERY surprised to find the domains opennl.org, opennl.com, and opennl.net had already been registered to a company called Loki Software.  And when I looked at my server logs (who has the time for THAT anymore?) I noticed a spike in web traffic coming from Loki, so I knew they knew about me.  So I emailed Loki around September 5:

What does opennl mean to Loki? Just curious, since I have started OpenNL
(Open Network Library), and I just now see that Loki registered
opennl.com, opennl.org, and opennl.net in March.

If my OpenNL project is going to conflict with an unannounced project of
yours, now would be a good time to straighten it out.

Oh, and I would like to thank whoever there is giving my site many hits
over the last few weeks  

Thank you,

Phil Frisbie, Jr.

I received a reply from Loki’s President, Scott Draeker, on September 7.

Phil:

Thanks for the email. This was on my to do list.

You might be familiar with our OpenAL project -- openal.org. We've
invested about 4 man years of development time (together with Creative
Labs) in creating that API and implementation.

We've also been quietly working on a similar project for networking,
called OpenNL, with goals very similar to those posted on your site.

So yes, there does appear to be something for us to talk about. Do you
have any thoughts on how we can straighten this out?

Scott Draeker

So far so good; nice and cordial.  In fact, I WAS a little familiar with OpenAL, and how it was being used to help port Windows games to Linux.

But here is where it gets a little fuzzy, because I am missing some emails.  All I can say is that by September 25, 2000, I had become agreeable to whatever Scott said (in other words, I was being careful not to upset him).  To fill it in, here is a post I made to this website on October 1, 2001:

Well, considering it has been over a year, and my emails to Loki
are never returned, I guess I can tell you a little bit  

Yes, Loki, the Linux game company behind OpenAL, you know, the
'portable' sound API that does not have the exact same API for
Windows, Linux, and MacOS  , they registered the OpenNL domain
three months before I publicly announced my OpenNL project.

At first my messages with Scott Draeker (highlander@lokigames.com)
were very polite. He said he did not want to compete with my
project, but offered me a position as a 'principle developer'
for OpenNL. But as I asserted myself just a little, his tone
changed. First, he informs me they filed paperwork to get a
registered trademark for OpenNL. When questioned further about
this, he admitted they filed AFTER I started using the name
OpenNL. I suggested that my web site proved prior use, but he
suggested that his company had the money and lawyers to win
in court!

So, I decided to comply and changed the name to HawkNL. I
then emailed Scott several times about when I could start
helping with OpenNL, but my emails have never been returned.

That is a very short version of the story. Maybe I will
pull out my old emails and write a full account and post it.

Phil

Well, I never did get around to providing that full account, and now there are some gaps in the story due to time.  As I said at the beginning of this post, I still regret that I did not hold my ground, at least until I actually got a letter from Scott’s lawyer to make sure he was serious and not just trying to get me to back down easily (like I did).  It won’t happen again, and if I were working on some new, yet unannounced project (hypothetical example -  SpeechZip, speech compression optimized for recording and archival), you can be sure I would register the domains ( for example – speechzip.com, speechzip.org) first this time

Loki never did do anything with the name OpenNL, and while I was busy on other things someone else began to use the name OpenNL for the Open Numerical Library.  But that is OK, because by that point HawkNL was being used in dozens of projects and by at least two universities to help teach network programming.  So I cannot complain too much.

This potential conflict came to mind while thinking about the importance of facilitating meetings by keeping people on topic.  It is important to not waste people’s time and address all the agenda items.  But, there was a nagging in the back of my mind about how some people come up with innovative ideas; they allow their thoughts to wander.

In a meeting there are sometimes tangent thoughts that are expressed, and these are the slight wanderings I believe can be important to innovation.  Not only can these wanderings be important for the person who brought them forth; anyone hearing it could have an epiphany and come up with a truly innovative idea.

I have been at meetings where the facilitator was known to be strong at keeping the meeting on a laser-straight course.  Those who were experienced with the facilitator knew to keep precisely on topic, while the newbies were quickly educated when they were cut-off in mid sentence as they strayed a tiny bit outside the current agenda item.  Sometimes they were offered to ‘take it offline’ or to ‘add it to the next agenda’.  Yes, those meetings ran silky smooth, on-time, and all the agenda items were covered, but I don’t remember any real innovation occurring.

I am going to remember this post as I facilitate meetings in the future.  I’m sure I will need to experiment with how much latitude I allow before drawing the discussion back to the current topic, and some of these meetings might run a little over, but I believe it will be worth it.  It sounds good in theory, now to see how it really works.