# Hacker Ethics From [[Hackers; Heroes of the Computer Revolution]] > [!quote] Access to computers—and anything that might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-on Imperative! [[Techno Utopia#Constructionist|Constructionist]] criterion. > [!quote] All Information should be free. This one connects to the [[#Four Essential Freedoms]], which it defined more elaborately. > [!quote] Mistrust Authority - Promote Decentralization. > [!quote] Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, position. [[Meritocracy]] criterion. Notice the lack of *sex* as the hacker culture was very male dominated. > [!quote] You can create art and beauty on a computer. > [!quote] Computers can change your life for the better. Inherent positivity of computing. # Four Essential Freedoms https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms A program is free software if the program's users have the four essential freedoms: > [!quote] > 0. The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0). > 1. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. > 2. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2). > 3. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. --- 💭 thoughts - Now that I'm reading this 2023, I don't understand how this is "essential". * **freedom 0** - the general-purpose computing is "not interesting" anymore. Computers are interesting due to the *context* of the computation (data, inputs, etc...). iPhone, even the earliest versions, weren't interesting due to their computational capacity but because of the packaging (of the internet, GPS, etc). Many people use Apple as an example of "war on general purpose computing" but the general purpose computing is abundant. * **freedom 1** - MIT MediaLab hacker culture that is less relevant now. * **freedom 2** - ... *so you can help others* is such a sleazy argument. Sure, there's a very close connection between FSF and socialistic beliefs, but this is creating a bad-faith argument. Once again, this may be related to the fact that the (perceived) marginal cost of software being 0. * **freedom 3** - to a certain degree, this is an extension of the freedom 1 and 2. However, there is some real merits to this (ex: copyright expiration promoting creativity). --- In many realms, where the universe of "practitioners" is still small (ex: academia), the philosophy of FSF is still influential (ex: open & reproducible research)