hacker ethic, the

hacker ethic, the 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.