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Thehacker ethic is aphilosophy and set of moral values withinhacker culture. Practitioners believe that sharing information and data with others is anethical imperative.[1] The hacker ethic is related to the concept offreedom of information, as well as the political theories ofanti-authoritarianism,anarchism, andlibertarianism.[2][3][4]
While some tenets of the hacker ethic were described in other texts likeComputer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) byTed Nelson, the termhacker ethic is generally attributed to journalistSteven Levy, who appears to have been the first to document both the philosophy and the founders of thephilosophy in his 1984 book titledHackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.
The term hacker originated at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s–1960s. The term "hacker" has long been used there to describe college pranks that MIT students would regularly devise, and was used more generally to describe a project undertaken or a product built to fulfill some constructive goal, but also out of pleasure for mere involvement.[5]
MIT housed an earlyIBM 704 computer inside the Electronic Accounting Machinery (EAM) room in 1959. This room became the staging grounds for early hackers, as MIT students from theTech Model Railroad Club sneaked inside the EAM room after hours to attempt programming the 30-ton, 9-foot-tall (2.7 m) computer.
The hacker ethic was described as a "new way of life, with a philosophy, an ethic and a dream". However, the elements of the hacker ethic were not openly debated and discussed; rather they were implicitly accepted and silently agreed upon.[6]
Thefree software movement was born in the early 1980s from followers of the hacker ethic. Its founder,Richard Stallman, is referred to by Steven Levy as "the last true hacker".[7]
Richard Stallman describes:
"The hacker ethic refers to the feelings of right and wrong, to the ethical ideas this community of people had—that knowledge should be shared with other people who can benefit from it, and that important resources should be utilized rather than wasted."[8]
He further states more precisely that hacking and ethics are two separate issues:
"Just because someone enjoys hacking does not mean he has an ethical commitment to treating other people properly. Some hackers care about ethics—I do, for instance—but that is not part of being a hacker, it is a separate trait. [...] Hacking is not primarily about an ethical issue.
[...] hacking tends to lead a significant number of hackers to think about ethical questions in a certain way. I would not want to completely deny all connection between hacking and views on ethics."[9]
The notion of moral indifference between hackers characterized the persistent actions of computer culture in the 1970s and early 1980s. According to Kirkpatrick, author ofThe Hacker Ethic, the "computer plays the role of God, whose requirements took priority over the human ones of sentiment when it came to assessing one's duty to others."
According to Kirkpatrick'sThe Hacker Ethic:
"Exceptional single-mindedness and determination to keep plugging away at a problem until the optimal solution had been found are well-documented traits of the early hackers. Willingness to work right through the night on a single programming problem are widely cited as features of the early 'hacker' computer culture."
The hacker culture is placed in the context of 1960s youth culture when American youth culture challenged the concept ofcapitalism and big, centralized structures. The hacker culture was a subculture within 1960s counterculture. The hackers' main concern was challenging the idea of technological expertise and authority. The 1960shippy period attempted to "overturn the machine." Although hackers appreciated technology, they wanted regular citizens, and not big corporations, to have power over technology "as a weapon that might actually undermine the authority of the expert and the hold of the monolithic system."
As Levy summarized in the preface ofHackers, the general tenets or principles of hacker ethic include:[10]
In addition to those principles, Levy also described more specific hacker ethics and beliefs in chapter 2,The Hacker Ethic:[11] The ethics he described in chapter 2 are:
From the early days of modern computing through to the 1970s, it was far more common for computer users to have the freedoms that are provided by an ethic of open sharing and collaboration.Software, including source code, was commonly shared by individuals who used computers. Most companies had a business model based on hardware sales, and provided or bundled the associated software free of charge. According to Levy's account, sharing was the norm and expected within the non-corporate hacker culture. The principle of sharing stemmed from the open atmosphere and informal access to resources at MIT. During the early days of computers and programming, the hackers at MIT would develop a program and share it with other computer users.
If the hack was deemed particularly good, then the program might be posted on a board somewhere near one of the computers. Other programs that could be built upon it and improved it were saved to tapes and added to a drawer of programs, readily accessible to all the other hackers. At any time, a fellow hacker might reach into the drawer, pick out the program, and begin adding to it or "bumming" it to make it better. Bumming referred to the process of making the code more concise so that more can be done in fewer instructions, saving precious memory for further enhancements.
In the second generation of hackers, sharing was about sharing with the general public in addition to sharing with other hackers. A particular organization of hackers that was concerned with sharing computers with the general public was a group calledCommunity Memory. This group of hackers and idealists put computers in public places for anyone to use. The first community computer was placed outside of Leopold's Records inBerkeley, California.
Another sharing of resources occurred when Bob Albrecht provided considerable resources for a non-profit organization called thePeople's Computer Company (PCC). PCC opened a computer center where anyone could use the computers there for fifty cents per hour.
This second generation practice of sharing contributed to the battles of free and open software. In fact, whenBill Gates' version ofBASIC for the Altair was shared among the hacker community, Gates claimed to have lost a considerable sum of money because few users paid for the software. As a result, Gates wrote anOpen Letter to Hobbyists.[21][22] This letter was published by several computer magazines and newsletters, most notably that of theHomebrew Computer Club where much of the sharing occurred.
According to Brent K. Jesiek in"Democratizing Software: Open Source, the Hacker Ethic, and Beyond," technology is being associated with social views and goals. Jesiek refers to Gisle Hannemyr's views on open source vs. commercialized software. Hannemyr concludes that when a hacker constructs software, the software is flexible, tailorable, modular in nature and is open-ended. A hacker's software contrasts mainstream hardware which favors control, a sense of being whole, and be immutable (Hannemyr, 1999).
Furthermore, he concludes that 'the difference between the hacker’s approach and those of the industrial programmer is one of outlook: between an agoric, integrated and holistic attitude towards the creation of artifacts and a proprietary, fragmented and reductionist one' (Hannemyr, 1999). As Hannemyr’s analysis reveals, the characteristics of a given piece of software frequently reflect the attitude and outlook of the programmers and organizations from which it emerges."
As copyright and patent laws limit the ability to share software,opposition tosoftware patents is widespread in the hacker andfree software community.
Many of the principles and tenets of hacker ethic contribute to a common goal: the Hands-On Imperative. As Levy described in Chapter 2, "Hackers believe that essential lessons can be learned about the systems—about the world—from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and more interesting things."[23]
Employing the Hands-On Imperative requires free access, open information, and the sharing of knowledge. To a true hacker, if the Hands-On Imperative is restricted, then the ends justify the means to make it unrestrictedso that improvements can be made. When these principles are not present, hackers tend to work around them. For example, when the computers at MIT were protected either by physical locks or login programs, the hackers there systematically worked around them in order to have access to the machines. Hackers assumed a "willful blindness" in the pursuit of perfection.[14]
This behavior was not malicious in nature: the MIT hackers did not seek to harm the systems or their users. This deeply contrasts with the modern, media-encouraged image ofhackers who crack secure systems in order to steal information or complete an act of cyber-vandalism.
Throughout writings about hackers and their work processes, a common value of community and collaboration is present. For example, in Levy'sHackers, each generation of hackers had geographically based communities where collaboration and sharing occurred. For the hackers at MIT, it was the labs where the computers were running. For the hardware hackers (second generation) and the game hackers (third generation) the geographic area was centered inSilicon Valley where theHomebrew Computer Club and thePeople's Computer Company helped hackers network, collaborate, and share their work.
The concept of community and collaboration is still relevant today, although hackers are no longer limited to collaboration in geographic regions. Now collaboration takes place via theInternet.Eric S. Raymond identifies and explains this conceptual shift inThe Cathedral and the Bazaar:[24]
Before cheap Internet, there were some geographically compact communities where the culture encouraged Weinberg's egoless programming, and a developer could easily attract a lot of skilled kibitzers and co-developers.Bell Labs, the MIT AI and LCS labs,UC Berkeley: these became the home of innovations that are legendary and still potent.
Raymond also notes that the success ofLinux coincided with the wide availability of theWorld Wide Web. The value of community is still in high practice and use today.
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Levy identifies several "true hackers" who significantly influenced the hacker ethic. Some well-known "true hackers" include:
Levy also identified the "hardware hackers" (the "second generation", mostly centered inSilicon Valley) and the "game hackers" (or the "third generation"). All three generations of hackers, according to Levy, embodied the principles of the hacker ethic. Some of Levy's "second-generation" hackers include:
Levy's "third generation" practitioners of hacker ethic include:
In 2001,Finnish philosopherPekka Himanen promoted the hacker ethic in opposition to theProtestant work ethic. In Himanen's opinion, the hacker ethic is more closely related to thevirtue ethics found in the writings ofPlato and ofAristotle. Himanen explained these ideas in a book,The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age, with a prologue contributed byLinus Torvalds and an epilogue byManuel Castells.
In this manifesto, the authors wrote about a hacker ethic centering on passion, hard work, creativity and joy in creating software. Both Himanen and Torvalds were inspired by theSampo inFinnish mythology. The Sampo, described in theKalevala saga, was a magical artifact constructed byIlmarinen, the blacksmith god, that brought good fortune to its holder; nobody knows exactly what it was supposed to be. The Sampo has been interpreted in many ways: aworld pillar orworld tree, acompass orastrolabe, a chest containing a treasure, aByzantinecoin die, a decoratedVendel period shield, a Christian relic, etc. Kalevala saga compiler Lönnrot interpreted it to be a "quern" or mill of some sort that made flour, salt, and wealth.[25][26]
Yes, the success of open source does call into some question the utility of command-and-control systems, of secrecy, of centralization, and of certain kinds of intellectual property. It would be almost disingenuous not to admit that it suggests (or at least harmonizes well with) a broadly libertarian view of the proper relationship between individuals and institutions.
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