How important is spreading the hacker ethic to a wider audience? Is compromising ideals (abandoning parts of the Hacker Ethic) worth having a larger impact on the world (and coincidentally more financial success)?

The greatest question that part two of the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution had me faced with was about the economical sustainability of the hacker ethic with respect to free software. As Bill Gates said, “Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?”

It’s not profitable to give away software for free, that’s for sure. In an idealistic world, everyone would share everything and everyone would help each other. Why can’t we do that? Well, in the United States, we associate the value of goods and services with money. We also believe that intellectual property ought to be protected. Patent and copyright laws allow for the commodification of code and software. Commodification is “the process of transforming inalienable, free, or gifted things (objects, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals) into commodities, or objects for sale.” The original hackers of MIT wrote valuable code without the concept of attaching monetary value to it. They worked for the sole purpose of learning and discovering; the reward was intrinsic. To people like Bill Gates, the free sharing of software devalued software and led to poorly written software. In other words, Bill Gates believed that software should be commodified.

Side-tangent: things like water are commodified. In the United States, water is not free, despite being a fundamental necessity for human life. Why isn’t water free? Because purifying water is expensive. So instead, people are “free” to have water if they can pay for it.

It’s hard for me to answer the question of whether or not software should be free. As someone who loves programming, it is my dream to make a living by programming because I’d be doing what I love. On the other hand, I believe I would be helping more people if I freely shared my code.

I think a great analogy to this situation is how researchers make a living. Researchers around the globe work on all sorts of things. When they discover something, they write about it and share it with the entire world for free! Imagine if researchers around the world kept their secrets to themselves. How slow would progress be? Researchers share their discoveries and findings to advance human knowledge, solve problems, and make an impact on the world. How can they afford to do this?

Many researchers actually struggle to find funding, but those that do may receive salaries, grants, and stipends. The primary source of funding for researchers in the United States is the federal government, and they get the money for research primarily from taxes. So, you could say that the general population funds researchers. What if we extended this to software developers and had the government fund programmers with tax dollars? Coders that make something worth patenting would be able to do so, and their license would be enforced by the federal government. Could this work? I have no idea.

One of the tenets of the hacker ethic, and consequently an argument for the free distribution of software, is that information should be free. This belief was held by hackers because they believed they should have the ability to fix and improve systems. They were also curious about things and wanted to learn how they worked. They believed that total transparency was the best way to advance technology.

It’s important to distinguish that the hackers of MIT did not mean that all information should have no price. By “free,” they meant that anyone should be able to use, modify, and distribute information. For example, ChatGPT is free to use, but it is not free to modify and distribute. Conversely, you may have to pay money in order to buy a computer, but once you own the computer, you have the freedom to modify it in any way you’d like (ignoring the voiding of warranties and the like).

In this light, is it possible to make a business out of selling software while giving those that buy it the freedoms to use, modify, and distribute it freely? Not in a capitalist society. Ultimately, though, for the world, is it better this way? Is it better for things to be locked up and secret, or would it be better if everything was freely shared?

The internet is the greatest example of free information. I initially thought of Wikipedia but realized the internet is so much more vast. The internet is not free in terms of money, but it is largely free from biases and non-neutral influences (net neutrality). To be honest, I’m not very knowledgeable in this area, but when I see all the information on the internet, I can’t believe I can access it all without having to pay to access each website.

In this way, I believe you can have a large impact on the world without compromising the ideals of the hacker ethic. The fact remains that information on the internet is largely freely accessible to anyone. You can learn almost everything about how anything works by surfing the web. Perhaps a little commercialization goes hand-in-hand with the distribution of information. I don’t necessarily think that they are directly opposing forces. After all, we still have to pay internet service providers, but they provide the infrastructure for the greatest network of information in the world.