ETHICS
HACKER ETHICS
HACKER ETHICS 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.
Quoted from the 'Jargon Dictionary' at
http://www.netmeg.net/jargon/
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