hacker ethic

philosophy 1. The belief that information-sharing is a

powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of

hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and

facilitating access to information and to computing resources

wherever possible.

2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is

ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft,

vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.

Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by

no means universally, accepted among hackers. Most hackers

subscribe to the hacker ethic in sense 1, and many act on it

by writing and giving away free software. A few go further

and assert that *all* information should be free and *any*

proprietary control of it is bad; this is the philosophy

behind the GNU project.

Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act of

cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering.

But the belief that "ethical" cracking excludes destruction at

least moderates the behaviour of people who see themselves as

"benign" crackers (see also samurai). On this view, it may

be one of the highest forms of hackerly courtesy to (a) break

into a system, and then (b) explain to the sysop, preferably

by e-mail from a superuser account, exactly how it was done

and how the hole can be plugged - acting as an unpaid (and

unsolicited) tiger team.

The most reliable manifestation of either version of the

hacker ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willing

to share technical tricks, software, and (where possible)

computing resources with other hackers. Huge cooperative

networks such as Usenet, FidoNet and Internet (see

Internet address) can function without central control

because of this trait; they both rely on and reinforce a sense

of community that may be hackerdom's most valuable intangible

asset.

(1995-12-18)