hacker ethic
hacker ethic
(philosophy)2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration isethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft,vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.
Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but byno means universally, accepted among hackers. Most hackerssubscribe to the hacker ethic in sense 1, and many act on itby writing and giving away free software. A few go furtherand assert that *all* information should be free and *any*proprietary control of it is bad; this is the philosophybehind the GNU project.
Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act ofcracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering.But the belief that "ethical" cracking excludes destruction atleast moderates the behaviour of people who see themselves as"benign" crackers (see also samurai). On this view, it maybe one of the highest forms of hackerly courtesy to (a) breakinto a system, and then (b) explain to the sysop, preferablyby e-mail from a superuser account, exactly how it was doneand how the hole can be plugged - acting as an unpaid (andunsolicited) tiger team.
The most reliable manifestation of either version of thehacker ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willingto share technical tricks, software, and (where possible)computing resources with other hackers. Huge cooperativenetworks such as Usenet, FidoNet and Internet (seeInternet address) can function without central controlbecause of this trait; they both rely on and reinforce a senseof community that may be hackerdom's most valuable intangibleasset.