JargonFile/entries/hacker ethic.txt

hacker ethic

n. 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
open-source code 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 open-source 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 behavior of people who see
themselves as benign crackers (see also samurai , gray hat ). 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 email 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 the Internet itself 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.