Chaos Computer Club 1997 February/cccd_beta_feb_97.iso/chaos/habi1/txt/hb1_24.txt

Text File | 1997-02-28 | 11KB | 249 lines

    In a new book called Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which was ~e ;nspiration for the conference,
    tenets of t}'e Hacker Ethic are stated as: [) Access to computers─and onything whrch might teach you something about
    the woy the world works─shouid be ualimited and totol. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperairve! 2) All information
    shouid be free. 3) Mistrust Au~or~ty─Promote Decentralization. 4} Hockers shouid be Judged by thetr hacking, not
    bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or pos'i'on. 5) You con create art and beauzy on a computer. 6) Computers
    con change your ~ife for the better. ─SB

            _
    DISCUSSIONS FROM THE HACKERSt CO.JFERENCE, NOVEMBER 1984

    .

    STEVEN LEVY (outhor of Hackers): The Hacker Ethic,
    as I think all of you know, isn t something which back
    at MIT in the early '60s people vveuid reise their hand
    and say, ' 1 vow ro follow the hacker ethic." It's a term
    I used to describe whar I felt vves a shared Dhilosophy,
    not only of the hackers at h1IT, but the people in the
    Homebrow Club who designed the first srnall computers
    in the mid-'70s, and some of the younger people who
    started hacking with those small computers later on.

    BILL BURNS (Homebrew era hobbylst): Steve, can a
    person be a hacker withour being the kind of super-
    star or v~zard tbet you're talking about in the book7
    Can somebody be a low-lovel hacker jU5t because he
    wants tO have fun and an intellectual cur~osity about
    the computer! Even though maybe he's not very good
    as a coder?

    LEVY: One issue that I found at MIT was tbet some
    peeple were complaining for that very reason─tbat
    you had to be a '.winner," you had to be really good
    to be considered a hacker.

    BRUCE WEBSTER (co~u~or of SUNDOC, a gnrat cap-
    ital~sts-in-space game): One of the ironies in tbet is tbat
    "hacker" originally denoted someone who wasn't very
    good. It was someone who vves not skilled profession-
    ally but tried to make up in volume what chey couidn't
    prodace in quality. (laughter) Or at least he vves using
    a shorgun rather than a high-powered rifle.

    RICHARD STALLMAN (MIT system hacker, author
    of EMACS): You're atways ganna find that if there's a
    community of real wizards they're gonna lose patience
    with the people who aren't. That doesn't mean that
    they can't be real hackers.

    VOICE: The question is, "Can you hack in BASIC7~'

    CHORUS: Nocooo!

    ROBERT WOODHEAD (co-author of WIZARDRY, d~e
    classic rok-pbying adventure game). Only if you're very
    very good cen you hack in BASIC. (laughter, applause}

    BRIAN HARVEY (forrner MIT ond Atori hacker, now
    worhing~ith kids), The terrn 'hack" at l~lIT predates
    compuur hacking. The way it started out, there were

    t~vo kinds of poople. There wem "tools," who were
    the ones who went to all their clas#s and when they
    weren't in class they were in the library. And then
    there were "hackers," who never went eo class and
    siep: all day and did something or other all night.
    Before it vv~s computers it was mode! reilroads. or
    telephones, or movies, or Chinese food, or anything.
    Hacking started OUt as not something technical
    (althongh it tended to be technical. becau# this i5 MIT
    vve're talking about}' but a sort of appraach to what's
    impor~ant in llfeMt really means being a hobbyis: and
    taking your hobby #riausly. If programming, for exam-
    pk, is something that you do on Sunday aftemoons and
    the rest of the time you don't think about it, then
    you're nor a hacker. But you don't necessarily have
    to be a star to be a hacker.








    Now, if you're at the MIT A.l. (Artificial Intelligence)
    Lab, at least if you vrere there when I vves there, you
    tid have to be a star in o~er not tO get dumpud on
    a lot. And that was the problem. It was something
    that I hated very much.

    DENNIS BR(:ITHERS (ou~or of MACTEP, ~e first tek-
    communicabons p~ogrom for d~e Macintost') 1t shouid b'
    painted out that, at least by the time I got there, '64
    or so, "hack" meant "a prank:' plain and simple. and
    the better the prank the better the hack. Things like
    the big black moon at the Harvard-Yale garne was the
    ultimate hack.

    PHIL AGRE (MIT A.l. Lob): The# days at the A.l. Lab,
    the word i'hack" is very, very difluse. It is one of the
    very large number of content-free generic words, like
    frob" and ' the right thing," tbat fill the hacker's dic-
    tionary. I get the impression from the olden days that
    it once meant something more fecosed, but 1'11 be
    damned if i can figure out what it was.

    STEVEbI LEYY Well, without focusing a whole lot
    on the word, I think there's pretty much an agreement
    here tbet there's a resentrnent of using the word totally
    to mean breaking into computer systems. and we are
    talking about it in a broader sense. How much of what
    we see now in programming has ehat same kind of
    devotion, non-dilettantism~ tbet we saw in the days
    when people had to stsy up all nighr just to get com-
    puter time?

    DOUG CARLS1~N ([ounder and p~esident of Broderbund,
    publisher of computer pmesj: May I protest just a little
    bit' When we were hacking araund in the mid-'60s at
    }larvard, it was not the engineering students who were
    the hackers. It was the libeml ants rnajars whose only
    computer time available was if they gummed up the
    locks and snuck inro the hilding late at night because
    they weren't allowed to sign up for the stuff. You did
    everyth~ng by trial and error, because we didn't have
    any courses, we didn't have access to anything other
    tban manuals, and as far as 1'm aware the whole graup
    of midnight programmers there v~ere people who didn't
    hsve any real functional use for what they were doing
    at all. So we called ourselves "hackers."

    BRUCE BAUMGART feorly Stonford A.l. hacker): I was
    at Harvard in the same years when I found the PDP-I
    ar the Cambridge electron accelerator and to stay up
    all night with it was just incredible. You couid roll in at
    9 P.M, when the physicists had left and you couid stsy
    ~here till 9 A M. when they rolled back in. Do it night
    alter night. I made it to classes but I slept through them.

    STEVE WITHAM (Xonodu, which is a scheme {or a
    worlöwide database and wnüng system founded by Ted
    Nelson): It's not so much a hacker ethic as a hacker
    insrinct. It's sort of like rhe baby ducks when they
    see their first moving obiect. (]aughterj

    RICHARD STALLMAN: ~fou see your first computer
    language and you think, "This langusge is perfect."
    (laughter)

    _ ~,~ ~a

    ~. '

    MARK MILLER ~Xonadu). The computer itself is really
    the f~rst rnoving oblec: in some sense tbze any of us
    have seen. I think that whae creates the hacker drive (1
    wan't call it a hacker ethic, and I want to argue about
    thar) is that there's a sense, "There's somerhing terribly
    important here." It gues beyond the effect chat this
    thing can hsve on the world and what I cen do wich it
    and all that. 'There's something essential here to under-
    stand and I don't know what it is yet." I still don't
    know what ir is.

    ST[YE WOZNIAK (designer of the Apple computer' co-
    founder of Apple Computer, Inc.): I think the hacker
    drive represents rhe children ;n us. Children love to
    discover, expiore, create something a little beyond what







    they couid before. In school you have the courses that
    teach you the problem and the solution, v~hereas the
    hackers tended to be just bright enough ro take the
    little starting points, the mathematical tools, and build
    up a solution of their own, and they couid discover the
    optimum solution of the day. The hacker motivation is
    what's different. They were intrinsicsily motivated: the
    challenge of solving the puzzle was the ouly rewa~.
    The rewards were in cheir head. It v~as like a hobby,
    whereas in the outside worJd they wouid hsve a job,
    careers, advancements, salaries─exuinsic r~wards.

    MARK MILLER: The reason I argue against the 6'hacker
    ethic'' I think ehat 5tsve Levy's book was wanderful
    and I enloyed it a lot, bot { very much reseneed the vvay
    it. I think, uied to shoeborn in this idea that hackers as
    a group were necessarily against the idea of intellectual
    property. I cons~ered myself a hacker in school, I con-
    sider myself a hacker now, and l've always thought tbat
    the idea of intellectual property was a good one.

    RICHARD STALLMAN: There is definitely a tendenq
    for hackers to not put up wieh someone who wants tO
    dellberately obstruct them from doing something that's
    a fun hack. If somebody sa~s, "It's useful for my pur-
    poses to provent people from doing this in-itself-
    innocent accivity, such as prevent people from Jogging
    in if I haven't given them accounts, or prevent people
    from running this program just because 1'11 get less
    money if d~ey can run ehis program," . . .

    VOICE: And use lots of undocumented entry points.

    STALLMAN: If the person doesn't see a good reason
    why he shouidn't run tbat program or wh~ he ~ouidn't
    use that computer, if he's a hacker, he'tl tend to view
    the buresucr~cy that StOpS him as a challenge rzeher
    than as an authonty that he must respec:.

    BILL BURNS: The drive tO do it is so strong d~at it
    sweeps orher things aside I think this is one of the big
    differences between the people that do thar hacking
    on computers tbst COSt a lo: and are owned by ocher
    peopie, and the people that do their hacking on m~cros
    wLere they own it. if you own the micro there's no us
    and ther~l' nobody's provenung you from doing anything
    bur yourself.

         I ``When we were hacking around in the mid-'60s at Harvard,
         nJ it was not the engineering students who were the hackers.
    / It was the llberal arts majors whose only computer time
    available was if they gummed up the locks and snuck into the
    buliding late at night because they weren't allowed to sign up

    for th. ctoff." ─DOUG CARLSTON, feunder ond p~sident of Broderbund,
                     publisher of computer ~ames

    ___ ~

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    , ·n 1

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