Hacker News Reader

Comment by malkia | Hacker News Reader

I have a problem that the word "hacker" was used in this context. Cracker (as coined by RMS), or criminal is more appropriate.

I've just read Sam William's RMS biography, and the word hack has been used since the 1950s for all things not done in harmful way.

And after all this is hacker news...

View on HN

Downvoted for what? WTF?

You are repeating a discussion that has happened literally thousands of times over the last thirty years.

As someone who has not lived that long I would like to ask why and when the word "Hacker" got a bad meaning attached to it?

It is mentioned as the 6th definition of "hacker" in the original jargon file [1], so at least by 1988.

1: http://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html

The movies "Hackers" and "The Net" were released in 1995. "Hackers" used the term to mean "someone who penetrates computer security". The one use of the term in in "The Net" [1] was ambiguous as to whether it meant this sense, or Paul Graham's sense of the word[2]; but 90% of the movie was about security and counter-security. So I'd say that the [counter]security connotation was common usage by that time.

[1] http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/n/net-script-tran...

[2] http://paulgraham.com/gba.html

The "good" meaning -- someone who enjoys figuring things out for themselves, taking things apart, analyzing and manipulating systems -- is implicitly bad from an authoritarian perspective. What more do you need to know?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com