[Savannah-hackers-public] What do you mean by saing "hack"?

[Paul S.]

Hello!

Can I ask you a linguistic question?)

I'm not a native english speaker, so I don't understand some local aspects and slang.

On this page:

http://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/HowToBecomeASavannahHacker

I see words "hackers", "to hack on the Savannah"... What does it mean? Am I right saying here "hack" = "write some none-standard chanches to completed code to achieve more performance or feachers but it was not planned by community or team". 

Could you explain please.

To say the truth, I was brought to that page from one discussion on russian forum. The discussion is about how to translate in english some russian slang phrase literally translated as "saw the code", where "saw" as "tree cutting". It means to program some code in methodical manner, with no hurry and no laziness. For example, some guy planned to implement some class for today and he says "Ok, now I will begin <sawing> this class".

It would be great if you will clarify it. 

Our thread in case you want to see it:

http://www.gamedev.ru/flame/forum/?id=170844

Thanks.

Paul