Open or Closed?

It's not a new debate. Traditional, "safe", commercial software or "free"-as-in-speech open source programs. On the one hand you have a tried and tested model. You have full-time programmers with time to bugfix. Most importantly, it seems, you have someone to sue when the lights go out and your hamster dies of dehydration. On the other hand you have free software, extra sets of eyes checking the code and the ability to extend the software, shaping it to fit your needs.

For some it is a basic philosophical question of the right to make money from original thought. Can you copyright an idea? Is software really a product? For others it is a business decision, made by weighing up the risks and costs against the potential benefits. What is it to you? Do you care? Should we? Should all software be free? Does that even make sense? Have your say, post below.

The Manifesto

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\/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/
+++The Mentor+++

Written on January 8, 1986
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Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"... Damn kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my world... Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..." Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here... Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found.

"This is it... this is where I belong..."

I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all... Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

+++The Mentor+++

http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?issue=7&id=3&mode=txt

Life, the Universe and Most Things

I've drifted through life with the delusion that the Universe loves me. Anything I need just falls into my lap, I'm the luckiest guy on Earth. But, as so often happens, I started to believe my own bullshit. Now the Universe has come to get its own back.

But, it turns out, the Universe is a bit rusty when it comes to serving up cold karma. Instead of ending up out of a job, I've been offered my dream job the day after I signed on for a perfectly good job. I'm not sweeping streets, I'm not cleaning windshields, but I'm not developing intelligent agents for the Defence Department either.

What next? It almost feels as though I ended up making out with the chick rom True Blood in a nightclub, and the chick from Heroes walks in. Oh well. Next time. A job is a job, right?

Anyway, my point is... wait, I know I had one in here somewhere. Oh yeah. Don't believe the bullshit. The universe doesn't love you, god doesn't hate you, there is no conspiracy, life is what you stake a claim to.