Hacker vs. Cracker [Re: [vox] what do they pay their staff for?!?]

[Micah J. Cowan]

On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 01:44:48PM -0800, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> john,
> 
> my apologies.
> 
> i don't know how old you are, but back then, there was no distinctions.
> today's "cracker" was yesterday's "hacker".
> 
> nobody ever asked me whether i wanted the word to change meaning.  i
> would've prefered if the revisionists would've chosen a word other than
> hacker to usurp.
> 
> i'll try to change my lingo in the future.

FWIW, from the point of view of the "revisionists", they were the
"original" definition of hacker (the ones who coined the term at MIT,
and those who used it for the same meaning later on at Stanford). They
were before even your time, I believe. It was the folks who pretty
much exclusively broke into remote systems that "stole" the term, from
their point of view. Which is why that crowd coined the term
"cracker", to distinguish them from themselves. Since this has a very
large basis in truth, I really wouldn't call them revisionists. Rather
the other way around.

Naturally, it didn't work very well: the "original" hackers called the
others "crackers", and the term caught on amongst themselves. But only
amongst themselves; the other folks obviously saw no reason to change
what they'd been calling themselves, and of course as they'd been
calling themselves "hackers" for some time up to this point, and they
got much more media attention than the other sort, so did the rest of
the world.

What *really* doesn't help the "original" crowd is that the
distinction between them and "crackers" was never so black and white
as they might have hoped: even the original MIT computer hackers were
reknowned for their disregard of barriers and authority, and their
contempt of electronic and physical security systems alike (several of
the MIT folks learned their way around advanced locks, and took
advantage of this for pranks and such). But this didn't include
everyone. I figure that the "crackers" (who call themselves "hackers")
focus on that side of the "hacker" nature, with a heavy leaning toward
the less-than-benevolent aspects of the originals; and that those who
wish to label them "crackers", distressed with what the term has come
to represent, would choose to forget that there was any semblance of
truth to their claim to the name.

>From what I've seen, the term has come to mean at least a couple dozen
different things: some different in very subtle ways, and some almost
complete opposites. At MIT, the term has grown quite apart from the
meaning which branched off into the rest of the world, and is used in
very broad terms. But even the "original" hackers stole the term from
the group which first called themselves hackers at MIT: the humble
members of the model railroad club :)

For my part, I generally use "hacker", and approve of its use, to
refer to the "revisionists" (as you call them), since to me they seem
closest to the original hackers (or more probably, they seem closest
to those portions of the original hacker lifestyle of which I
approve). But in general, I am more or less disgusted with the heavy
ambiguity in the term's definition, no matter which of the several
existing circles you are in, and would prefer to abandon the term once
and for all. I have come to use the term "cracker" consistently in
describing systems Vandals; but avoid using the term "hacker" for the
most part, unless I am reasonably certain that what I mean by the word
will not be misunderstood.

Disclaimer and Book Promotion: the biggest source I am drawing from
for my information is Steven Levy's book "Hackers: Heroes of the
Computer Revolution", which is the most informative source I've ever
discovered, and is, FWICT, extremely accurate. It gives terrific
insight into the beginnings of the Hacker culture (both sorts), as
well as personal computers and Free Software. Everyone on this list
ought to read it.

Just my $0.02; don't really care whether anyone agrees or not, just
voicing my opinion on the matter.

-Micah