Black Belt Content
In this lesson, we will address a fundamental issue: what is hacker
ethics. Every society has its morals and ethics. Morals are linked to
customs and ethics is linked to the greater objectives of a culture.
Ethics is linked to the idea of good that a society, culture or
professional group has. Obviously, being unethical is to do things that
are far from good. It is acting in an evil manner.
Let's turn our discussion a great film that talks about hackers and monopolies: Antitrust. The film revolves around the actions of the powerful, unscrupulous CEO of the software giant NURV, named Gary Winston. At the beginning of the film Gary appears testifying before the U.S. Senate where he says: "This business is a living organism... multiplying itself constantly, surrounded by predators. There is no free time or suppositions. New discoveries are made every hour. New ideas are ready to be devoured and redefined. This business is binary. It's 1 or 0... life... or death."
Let's look at an excellent passage from the film:
SENATOR: - Mr. Winston, are you really denying you have a monopoly in this industry?
WINSTON: - Well, the only monopoly that we have at Nurv, Senator... is a monopoly on excellence. This is still a free market.
SENATOR: - But free markets encourage competition. And you sir, stifle it.
WINSTON: - Senator, I don't need to remind you that the essence of competition has always been very simple. Any kid working in a garage... anywhere in the world, with a good idea... can put us out of business.
Gary is saying that his business depends on keeping knowledge of his products from thousands of kids smart enough to create better software. He is justifying the monopoly on knowledge. For Gary there is only one way. He said, "any kid can put us out of business." Really? In fact, Gary should have said that any kid could put an end to his monopoly. This is why Gary defends proprietary code. Do you know why? For the simple fact that human knowledge is poorly distributed in the world.
We need to take an in-depth look at what this issue (open source code) has to do with hacker ethics. In the film, the mega-monopolist Gary Winston wanted to control the World Wide Web with a product he called Synapse. To carry out his plan, he stole codes, killed hackers and hired brilliant programmers, as was the case with the young Milo Hoffman. To make a long story short, Milo discovers what Gary Winston is up to and broadcasts a video on prime time TV showing the illegal methods employed by Winston. In addition, Milo and his friends put the source code for Synapse on the World Wide Web. The film ends with a phrase that characterizes the essence of hacker ethics. Various journalists are standing in front of the garage of the Milo's friends' small company, all asking questions at the same time. And one of them says: JOURNALIST: - What do you think you accomplished Milo? And what is the importance of it? MILO: - It means that we are returning Synapse... to the people from which it was stolen. Human knowledge belongs to humanity.
Here we have a very important question: Does knowledge really belong to humanity? We can try to answer this question by looking to one of the greatest hackers of the 20th century. I'm speaking of Richard Stallman. Stallman was a researcher at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. One fine day, he tried to configure his new printer. He couldn't do it. He called the manufacturer to ask for the necessary configurations to write a driver.
The employee of the company that sold him the printer said that Stallman was crazy. He could never give him the proprietary code. Stallman became very angry. He stopped and thought about how outrageous it was that closed source software was beginning to impose itself on the world. He then decided to create the Free Software Foundation and the movement for open-source software.
Let's read a short passage of the e-mail that Stallman sent to a list of people that used UNIX (an operating system for large machines that was inspired on LINUX):
"I believe that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I have to share it with other people like me. I can't, with a clear conscience, sign a nondisclosure agreement or software licensing contract. So to continue to use computers without going against my principles, I decided to gather enough open-source software so I could continue without using any software that wasn't open source.
Stallman was a brilliant programmer. He could have closed the software that he produced, but he decided to share. Stallman acted according to his principles, according to a norm of conduct. Stallman brought with him hacker ethics. Now we can get a better understanding of hacker ethics.
A Finnish anthropologist and philosopher named Pekka Himanen studied hacker communities and texts for many months. This study allowed him to determine the norms of conduct of the hacker community spread throughout the world.
A true hacker loves what he does. He doesn't work just to receive a paycheck, he works on a code or on unraveling a configuration because this is what he loves.
SHARING IS AT THE CENTER OF HACKER THINKING. Not that a hacker is against working for money. Hackers aren't against earning lots of money. What hackers defend is that the knowledge that makes them happy and wealthy can also make other people happy and wealthy. That is the defense of sharing technological knowledge. Giving their creations to others was and is what hackers do. However, note that the creations of hackers are the result of accumulated human knowledge. Therefore, giving is passing on what they have received. What does the Internet have to do with defending freedom or hacker ethics?
In his book on hacker ethics, the philosopher Himanen made an enormous contribution to all of us that want to understand hacker thinking or become a hacker:
"As we can see, a third and crucial aspect of hacker ethics is the attitude of hackers toward networks, or in other words, their network ethics, which is defined by the values of the activity and care. Activity, in this context, involves absolute freedom of expression, privacy to protect individual lifestyles, and disdain for passivity in the face of individual passion."
"Here care means worrying about others as an end in itself and a desire to free virtual society from the survival mentality that is the slippery slope of its logic. Another objective is to help everyone participate in the network and benefit from it, promote a feeling responsibility for long-term consequences in virtual society, and directly help those that have been marginalized. These are still very open objectives, and it is unknown whether the influence of hackers will reach the scale of the two aspects cited previously."
SOLIDARITY IS A Fundamental Element In Hacker Ethics. The Media, When It Uses The Term Hacker, Generally Uses It In The Pejorative Sense. It Confuses The Actions Of Virtual Criminals, Crackers And Iconoclasts, With Those That Develop Open-Source Software. Much Of This Confusion Was Motivated By The Proprietary Software Industry Which Purposely Propagates the Notion That Software With Open Source Code Is For Hackers. And it is! For Hackers Who Follow The Ethics Of Freedom And Sharing Of Knowledge.
It's Interesting To Note That So-Called Piracy, Or In Other Words, The Use Of Software Without Paying, For The Companies Who Use This Software Licensing Model, Is Carried Out Using Executable Code. Pirating Of Proprietary Software Is Carried Out Widely Without Needing To Pirate The Source Code Of The Software. So, Why Hide The Source Code If The Closed Source Model Doesn't Even Protect It From Piracy?
Let's take a look at another enlightening passage on hacker ethics written by the philosopher and researcher Pekka Himanen:
"A hacker who lives in accordance with hacker ethics in all of its three aspects-work, money and network ethics-earns respect from the community. This Hacker Becomes A True Hero When He Achieves The Seventh And Last Level."
What is this last level that Himanen is talking about?
"That Level (...) Is Creativity. - In Other Words, The Imaginative Use Of The Skills Each One Of Us Has, Exceeding One's Own Accomplishments, And Making A Genuinely Valuable Contribution To The World."
Individual Creativity Is Vital, But It Is Only Possible When Based On Accumulated Knowledge. Let's Now Take A Look At An Example Of Hacker Ethics.
In a network, hacker ethics have generated much more development. "The Internet emerged from the improbable intersection of big science, military research and libertarian culture." (Castells)
Regardless of other considerations and possible evaluations, we can categorically state that hacker culture and ethics boosted development of the Internet and information technology. The Internet emerged in a era called the Cold War, a standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, two nuclear powers. The United States wanted to build a communications system that would be immune to a nuclear attack. To do this, it hired scientists and researchers, most of whom were visionaries who participated in US counterculture. From this fusion the Internet was born. Counterculture visionaries built hacker communities that were vital to technological development. However, traditional culture and big business has maintained control over the information society. This vision, based on the closed source code model, is typical of an economy of material goods that, since they are scarce, cannot easily be shared.
Hackers have their own ethics. Freedom with passion and sharing. The more ethical a hacker is, the more he is recognized. Unlike that which occurs in other fields of society, being ethical is the best way to becoming a great hacker.
As Richard Stallman used to say: HAPPY HACKING!
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