Hacker Ethic
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Contents |
The Hacker Ethic
- Always yield the Hands-On Imperative! Access to computers - and anything else which might teach you about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total.
- All information should be free.
- Mistrust Authority - Promote Decentralization.
- Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
- You can create art and beauty on a computer.
- Computers can change your life for the better.
(Levy, 1984) Source
Commentary
The list above is excerpted and slightly modified from chapter two of Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by Steven Levy (published 1984). Incidentally, the internet source above chose not to include a seventh item from Levy's book: "Like Aladdin's Lamp, you could get it to do your bidding." This part of the hacker ethic is expressed in things like teaching your AIBO how to dance (which is illegal, by the way, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), or making a Commodore 1541 drive sing (which, though not illegal, was probably contraindicated by the users' manual).
See also
- Hacker-ethic From Eric S. Raymond's definitive Jargon File (published in 1983 by Guy Steele as The New Hacker's Dictionary [1]).
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