“I had read the seven main works contained in this book before
picking it up. The author, Eric Raymond, posted the first, A Brief
History of Hackerdom, back in 1992. How to Become a Hacker – found
in the appendix – has been repurposed in a number of sites.
Raymond’s writings became legendary and my more interesting geek
friends sent them to me. Soon we found ourselves frequently
checking Raymond’s site for new stuff.”
“The book is about freedom. Raymond speaks of the benefits of
freedom in promoting the concept of open-source development. He is
not against profit – far from it. Rather, he shows how ideas
flourish, technology leaps ahead and people benefit from the
advancements and creators profit when innovations are shared rather
than held in a proprietary form.”
“Raymond is also admittedly biased. He is vocally
pro-hacker. However, this should not diminish the strength of his
ideas, which are well thought out, balanced and reasonable.
Besides, he uses the term “hacker” in its pure and true sense. I’ve
found that hackers are a lot like witches. Neither was evil until
the powers that be decided they were too influential so these
powerful people manufactured a bad reputation for them and
eventually others took over the name (witch or hacker) and made the
evil come true. Real witches love nature and work with herbs and
help people. Real hackers love code and work with systems and help
people. As Raymond says, “hackers build things, crackers break
them.”