The Hacker's Ethics
Unlike so many of the socalled "hackers" today, the original hackers at places like MIT, Berkeley and Stanford had a clear code of ethics. In 1984, Steven Levy published a book titled Hackers in which he listed the ethical code of these first hackers. This is the Hacker's Ethic.
1 Access to computers-and anything which might teach one something about the way the world works-should be unlimited and total.
2 All information should be free.
3 Mistrust authority-promote decentralization.
4 Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not by other criteria.
5 One can create art and beauty on a computer.
6 Computers can change one's life for the better.
References:
http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/hackethic.html
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hackers.html
http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/hacker_ethics.html
