Hacker ethics

The hacker ethic is a set of moral and philosophical principles that emerged and applied to virtual hacker communities, although they are not exclusive to this area, since many of their values can be applied outside the computer science and the act of hacking. The expression is usually attributed to journalist Steven Levy in his seminal essay Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, published in 1984, where he described and enunciated in detail the moral principles that emerged in the late 1950s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and, in general, in the culture of computer enthusiasts of the 1960s and 1970s. The key principles can be summarized as free access to information and that information technology can improve people's quality of life.

Some of its current authors have been the Finnish Pekka Himanen and the American Eric S. Raymond. Other recognized hackers who have helped create part of this ethic are Linus Torvalds and Richard M. Stallman.

History

MIT and the ARPANET

The start of the Hacker Culture as we know it can be safely traced back to 1961 when MIT got the first PDP-1. In this period MIT created a whole slang, programs and tools regarding PDP computers that were They continued well into the 1990s, much of it propelled by a student group called the Tech Model Railroad Club. It is when, in 1969, the ARPANET was launched and various universities and centers in North America were connected to each other (the most important for the hacker culture of this time would be the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) and Carnegie Mellon University). It is here that MIT has its historical importance by creating its own operating system for PDP computers, known as ITS (Incompatible Timesharing System) and written in a language that would later be known as LISP code, a much more flexible and powerful language than the that existed at that time, and that is used even today, the most classic example is the Emacs text editor.

In this period SAIL and other artificial intelligence centers also developed hardware and software that later gave rise to personal computers and window and icon user interfaces as we know them. Also, a clear mention in hacker culture is PARC and how they innovated in the genre but lacked recognition, producing laser printer, window and mouse interface hardware and software before, among others.

Unix and hacker groups

At the same time that the entire technological boom around PDP computers was taking place at MIT and other universities around the ARPANET, in New Jersey Ken Thompson together with Dennis Ritchie created the UNIX operating system based on a project from Bell Laboratories on the Multics operating system. The idea of Multics was to generate an operating system with several innovations, but due to the poor performance of the first versions, it was disassociated from the project. It is Thompson who decides to continue working on the Multics project and started programming a new system on an old PDP-7 rescuing the programs and features that he would find relevant. At this time Dennis Ritchie creates a new language called C and proposes to Thompson that he reassemble under this new language. The prototype of this operating system had the name UNICS, which was considered a emasculated Multics operating system by many programmers of the time (since, in English, Eunuchs is a homophone of UNICS), for which the system was renamed UNIX.

What is relevant about the creation of UNIX is the fact that both Thompson and Ritchie realized that an operating system could be written completely in C, thanks to the software and hardware advances that existed at the time, unlike how common it was to write systems using assembly language. In fact, by 1978, they had already managed to port UNIX to many computers of the time, and by 1980 several centers and universities had already switched to UNIX. In addition, thanks to the fact that UNIX also carried its own network (the UUCP), it allowed a cheap communication system between machines, which would later become USENET, a nation of UNIX networks that over the years surpassed the ARPANET user network..

By 1980, LISP and ARPANET users and C and USENET users had been grouped into two different camps, together with a small group of hackers who were advancing the field of portable computers based on the BASICS language (in 1977 APPLE is founded and many microcomputer enthusiasts appear). Each one was connected to each other, but deep down they worked with very different technologies. Soon the MIT group was falling behind as the technology of PDP machines was becoming obsolete, and it was the same period that Steven Levy writes Hackers. It is in the process of this book that Richard M. Stallman appears, who created the Free Software Foundation and was deeply dedicated to the creation of free software.

Birth of Free Unix

In the 1980s, Unix passed into the hands of AT&T, and Bekerley's Unix and the one corresponding to AT&T's began to take shape as the two poles where hackers began to gather. From time to time there were still quarrels between ITS users and Unix users, but in 1990 the last ITS died down and many of the users of this system were configuring themselves in these new poles of Unix and in the group of personal computers.

By the 1990s, many hackers could afford a personal computer, which thanks to Intel's 386 chip could afford the same power and capacity as the computer servers of a decade ago. the problem was that Unix systems were still too expensive for personal use, and all attempts to commercialize it were not very productive, even the Free Software Foundation was not doing well in designing GNU Hurd, a free Unix kernel, great part of this because until then the only forms of software development were under the Cathedral Model.

It is in this context that Linus Torvalds began in 1991 the development of a kernel of the GNU Hurd line of the Free Software Foundation, releasing the prototype of Linux to the hacker community and giving rise to the creation of the first Unix system of totally open source and redistributable, GNU/Linux. Because this system was constantly being produced and reprogrammed by an insurmountable number of hackers every week, the project progressed with overwhelming speed. By 1993, GNU/Linux was a consistent and reliable operating system for all hackers in North America, becoming their favorite to this day. This GNU/Linux milestone is one of the greatest examples of the hacker ethic, and perhaps its greatest achievement.

Much of the success of GNU/Linux can best be seen in the article The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond.

Hacker ethics value system

The hacker ethic is an axiological type of ethic, that is, an ethic based on a certain series of values. Himanen rescues some fundamentals, namely: passion, freedom, social conscience, truth, anti-corruption, fight against the alienation of man, social equality, free access to information, social value, accessibility, activity, responsible concern, curiosity, creativity, interest and practical aspects.

Likewise, the practice of hacker ethics, those who promote it think of a truly democratic society; thinking that institutions, companies and the State work or should work to achieve the common good. Also, the people who have that thought and intend to defend that good, set an example and train their fellow colleagues, employees, workers and other professionals from other areas of knowledge to achieve it.

Therefore, the system of values that the hacker ethic promotes cannot be produced on a purely individual or sectarian level, it would not make sense if it were not practiced in social coexistence. That is why it is said that the hacker ethic, instead of the traditional representative democracy where many of the social projects are not generally carried out, promotes a participatory democracy, where people feel useful by acting in practice.

The Hacker ethic: vocation of minorities

A disadvantageous issue for anyone who wants to promote the hacker ethic, is that they are immediately branded as "moralistic" or "nerd". This is a nickname that is hardly bearable. For many people, talking about the common good, conscience and social equality, free access to information, among other values of interest and practical aspects of the hacker ethic means becoming a prudent being, full of prejudices or complexes and often considered either a fool or an annoying fanatic. According to a certain snobbish or avant-garde notion, to speak of the hacker ethic is to be revolutionary or "communist". And it is precisely this enormous mistake that has led some activists like Stallman together with the Free Software Foundation to clarify and defend the vocation of hackers.

What does a hacker do?

Himanen, in his work The hacker ethic and the spirit of the information age (containing a foreword by Linus Torvalds and an epilogue by Manuel Castells), begins by rescuing one of the original meanings of the term 'hacker'. According to Himanen, a hacker is not a criminal, vandal or computer hacker with high technical knowledge (which he prefers to call crackers), a term that was confused thanks to the press of the eighties, the period of the first computer attacks, but hacker is anyone who works with great passion and enthusiasm for what they do. Hence the term 'hacker' can and should be extrapolated to other areas such as, for example, the scientific. Thus Himanen writes:

"...in the center of our technological era are some people who call themselves hackers. They define themselves as people who are engaged in programing passionately and believe it is a duty for them to share information and develop free software. We must not confuse them with crackers, destructive users whose goal is to create viruses and enter into other systems: a hacker is an expert or enthusiast of any kind that can be dedicated to computer science or not. In this sense, hacker ethics is a new moral that defies the Protestant ethic of work, as explained almost a century ago by Max Weber in his work Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalismand which is founded on diligent labor, acceptance of routine, the value of money and concern for the account of results..."

Faced with the morality presented by Weber, the hacker's work ethic is based on the value of creativity, and consists of combining passion with freedom. Money ceases to be a value in itself and the benefit is encrypted in goals such as social value and free access, transparency and frankness.

Hacker Ethics

Steven Levy summarizes in Hackers the postulates or principles of hacker ethics, which are summarized in: Sharing; Transparency; Decentralization; Free access to computers; Betterment of the world. In addition to these outlines, Levy also described more specific hacker ethics and beliefs in Chapter 2, The Hacker Ethics:

1. Access to computers-and anything that can teach anything about the way the world works, must be unlimited and total: and has the skills of hackers to learn and build on pre-existing ideas and systems. Access is believed to give hackers the possibility of dismantling things, correcting or improving about them and to learn and understand how they work. This gives them the knowledge to create new and even more interesting things. Access helps to expand technology.
3. All information must be free: Information should be free for hackers so they can fix, improve and reinvent systems. A free exchange of information allows greater creativity in general. Under the view of hackers, any system could benefit from an easy flow of information, a concept known as Transparency in the social sciences. As Richard Matthew Stallman points out, Free= "free" refers to unrestricted access; not "free" as free.
5. Distrust in authority, promote decentralization: The best way to promote the free exchange of information is to have an open system that has no limits between a hacker and a piece of information or an element of the equipment you need in your search for knowledge. Hackers believe that bureaucracies, whether corporate, government, or university, are defective systems.
7. Hackers must be judged by their ability, not by criteria such as titles, age, ethnicity, sex or position: Inherent to hacker ethics is a meritocratic system, where superficiality is taken into account in the estimation of skill. Steven Levy points out that criteria such as age, sex, ethnicity, position and qualification are considered irrelevant within the hacker community. The ability of a hacker is the ultimate determinant of acceptance. This code within the hacker community encourages the advancement of computer optimization and software development.
9. You can create art and beauty on a computer: Hackers deeply appreciate innovative techniques that allow programs to perform complicated tasks with few instructions. the code of a program is considered to celebrate its own beauty, after having been carefully composed and artistically arranged. Learning to create programs that use the least amount of space almost became a game of hackers in the 1990s.
11. Computers can change their lives for the better: Hackers felt that computers had enriched their lives, and made their life adventurous. Hackers consider computers as Aladino lamps they could control. It is believed in the community that everyone in society could benefit from experiencing such power and that if everyone could interact with computers in the way that hackers did, then hacker ethics could spread through society and computers would improve the world. the hacker succeeded in turning the dreams of endless possibilities into realities. the main objective of a hacker is to teach society that "the world opened by the computer is an infinite world."

About the Hacker Attitude

An article by Eric S. Raymond ("How can I become a hacker?") outlines the core values that stand out in this ethic, writing that hackers solve problems and build things, and believe in freedom and mutual voluntary aid. To be accepted as a hacker, you will have to behave as if you have this attitude within you. And in order to behave as if you have this attitude, you have to really believe that attitude. For this he defines some transversal points to any type of hacker, among these he says that:

1. The world is full of fascinating problems that hope to be solved: tells us that a hacker is always willing and motivated to solve problems, competitiveness and challenges are the engine of inspiration and operation of the personality hacker, allows to demonstrate and refine your skills, this in itself, is one of the most important rewards of any hacker in the world.
3. No problem would have to be solved twice.: time is precious for every hacker, so it should not be spent solving the same problem, every time you solve a problem, share it in the community so that other hackers do not waste their time solving something that is already done, and instead they can dedicate themselves to other projects or to optimizing what you created.
5. Boring and routine work are pernicious: no person should do a job for which he is not motivated, because by doing this they are not solving problems that if they motivate them and helping to create solutions, tools or optimizing solutions already made. Therefore one should keep these tasks as automated as possible to devote time to solving problems.
7. Freedom is good: the authoritarian attitude must be combated wherever it is found, the hackers must occupy their freedom to solve problems, so any attitude that coffers this freedom must be rejected and confronted.
9. Attitude is no substitute for competition: no matter how much of the above points the person has, a hacker must always be willing to refine his skills and competences, no matter how libertarian he is if he is not able to solve problems

Core Values

The hacker ethic is an axiological type of ethic, that is, an ethic based on a certain series of values. Himanen rescues some fundamentals, namely:

• Passion
• Freedom
• Social awareness
• Truth
• Honesty
• Anticorruption
• Combating alienation of people
• Social equality
• Free access to information (free knowledge)
• Social value (recognition among such)
• Accessibility
• Activity
• Responsible concern
• Curiosity
• Creativity
• Interest

Hacker Ethics and Crackers

You can differentiate on the basis of these values between the White Hat, Black Hat and Gray Hat. The White Hats are Hackers who use their abilities to find failures in systems to test their capabilities, they usually notify the owner of the system after entering the system to inform him of the failure, and that it can be fixed, they can also do it for contractual reasons, many White hats are hired by companies that make security software, or to see if there are flaws in their systems. The Black Hats, commonly known as Crackers, are computer hackers who use their abilities for illegal actions. Finally, the Gray Hats are those who oscillate between legal and illegal activities.