Who am I?

My name is Eric Masson and…

  • I am the proud father of four and grand dad of two already :)
  • Canadian living in Montreal
  • Started programming on a Commodore VIC-20(in 1980) and never looked back. Learned 6502 as Basic was too limited for graphic and extended it to a whooping 32Kb
  • I love American muscle cars, but deep down I am a big Mustang fan and consider myself a gear head
  • I was lucky enough to travel the world and work overseas for more than 10 years
  • I speak several languages and love Asian cultures
  • I am passionate about space exploration, astrophysics, mysteries of the Universe and slowly diving into Quantum computing
  • I love electronic music to the point of making my own and djing in clubs and after-hours. Visit my Soundcloud page at: soundcloud.com/ameza
  • I had the privilege to work with SGI and helped many companies with their interactive computer graphic technologies and high performance computing challenges
  • My love and passion for SGI and 3D started with Daniel Langlois’s SoftImage, and the rest is history.
  • I love anything 3D/VR/AR/MR related and I still enjoy doing 3D modelling with Blender and writing cool stuff on the Unity platform.

What else do you need?

Here’s my ‘official & corporate’ profile

Eric Masson has established a solid reputation for himself in the fields of modern mission critical system delivery, SAP integration and Interactive Computer Graphics. Eric Masson brings extensive expertise associated with in depth software development knowledge, technical team leading/mentoring and international business affairs guaranteeing success!

Among the strengths of Eric Masson are a solid 23+ years of Java Enterprise Class Technologies, 20+ years in Enterprise level messaging technology, 25+ years of direct experience in pioneering real-time 3D computer graphics on SGI, OpenGL/X11/Motif/Qt.

Eric Masson has realized successful projects in the Finance, Banking, Insurance and Utilities/Energy Sectors. From investment back/front office connected to SAP, FundSERV, straight-through processing to world class stock-exchanges, to Life Insurance CITS/CLIEDIS data exchange and front & back office Systems to illustrations.

Eric Masson has worked in Hong Kong for over nine (9) years at first for the massive Chep Lak Kok International Hong Kong Airport project and later for several international and local Information Technology Companies where he was designing, developing and delivering mission critical systems for fortune 100 corporations. Among those high profile IT projects are the Hong Kong Stock Exchange System (AMS/3), Citibank Online Share Trading, TheGoldenClick.com day trading portal and Hongkong Telecom Payphone System to name a few.

MaXX Interactive Desktop

I am the creator and author of the MaXX Interactive Desktop, aka the SGI Desktop on Linux. I basically wrote and adapted existing technology to recreate the SGI Desktop on Linux. I was given (in early 2000s) a special license from SGI that allowed me to pursue my passion and without getting in trouble with SGI’s lawyers. The license in a nutshell allows me to duplicate the entire desktop user experience, re-implement (by myself) the required SGI APIs and duplicate the SGI look and feel.

As of today, I must comply to some rules established and agreed between SGI and myself. The desktop is currently limited to Linux (Intel) operating system, and I cannot release some of my source code in order to protect some of SGI’s intellectual property. Having said that, I wish at some point to change that and support OpenBSD and ARM based Linux distributions with of course the consent of whom controls/owns those intellectual property rights.