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 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). 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 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.
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hacker humor
A distinctive style of shared intellectual humor found among
hackers, having the following marked characteristics:
1. Fascination with form-vs.-content jokes, paradoxes, and
humor having to do with confusion of metalevels (see meta). One way to make a hacker laugh: hold a red
index card in front of him/her with "GREEN" written on it, or
vice-versa (note, however, that this is funny only the first
time).
2. Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual
constructs, such as specifications (see write-only memory), standards
documents, language descriptions (see INTERCAL), and even entire scientific
theories (see quantum
bogodynamics, computron).
3. Jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre,
ludicrous, or just grossly counter-intuitive premises.