Hacker ethic

The hacker ethic is a branch of philosophy, originating from hacker culture and pertaining to the idea that intellectual goods, such as information and data, cannot be owned by an individual, hence sharing them with others is an ethical imperative. It shares several traits with concepts such as freedom of information, and political philosophies such as anti-authoritarianism, socialism, liberalism, anarchism, and libertarianism.

For the book, see The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age. For uses in computer security hacking, see Hacker (computer security), Hacker Manifesto, and White hat (computer security)

While some tenets of hacker ethic were described in other texts like Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) by Ted Nelson, the term hacker ethic is generally attributed to journalist Steven Levy, who appears to have been the first to document both the philosophy and the founders of the philosophy in his 1984 book titled Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.

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