: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 free software 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 free  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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