Hackers not in the Cathedral

I think it’s plainly clear that the Hacker Ethic cannot truly and fully survive in a world of commercial and proprietary software. As we’ve seen in the previous chapter, many hardware hackers found themselves unable to continue to freely spread information once they joined or created their own companies. Even though some of the early video game companies shared information amongst themselves in order to help create better products, this behavior was limited only to those companies and larger companies (like Atari) had the opposite behavior, and tried to keep as much information hidden as possible. In addition, these companies would pursue litigation against the smaller, hacker owned companies. Over time, the hacker companies would eventually be forced to compete like larger companies did, both as the market evolved and as the hackers become more divorced from their roots, either over time or with an influx of new management (we saw the same thing happen with Apple with Wozniak leaving)

  In this week's reading and discussion, we learned about the second wave of hackers, who were more focused on hardware than just software. These hackers were of a very different type than the hackers who were shaped by the culture of the RLE lab. While the first hackers were systems hackers, who were obsessed far more with the software they could make on the hardware they had, the second wave hardware hackers were very interested in building their own computers, especially with the rise of microprocessors. While they both emphasized the importance of the Hacker Ethic and the hands-on imperative, the main difference was that software was not the end all be all for these hackers. They did write and give away programs for free (at least, in the beginning they did), but they also focused on building their own computers and increasing their performance. The fun for these hackers was often in the actual construction of the machine and knowing why it worked, which was not as important fo

When I was younger, I thought of a “true hacker” as a young guy in his mid 20s, usually wearing a trench coat and sunglasses (even indoors!), who got into databases or got control of systems  remotely. After taking systems programming, my view shifted more towards a more broad view, that hackers are basically just people who do side projects. However, reading through this week’s reading, I’ve come to think of a “true hacker” as someone who creates something with pure passion, especially if that something is a modification of or interacts with an existing system, and is willing to spend an inordinate amount of time working on their project.    I think especially of the early hackers from MIT of the Tech Model Railroad Club as my example of “true hackers”. When I was reading the stories of how they would spend 30 hours over a weekend just learning about new systems, or that they would stay up until 3 in the morning or switch to 30 hour days just to have more time to play around with a co