And then they sold out.
CdD turned into "L0PHT Heavy Industries" (http://www.l0pht.com/), a computer security firm. That turned into "@Stake" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/@stake). "@Stake" was acquired by Symantec in 2004.
CdD turned into "L0PHT Heavy Industries" (http://www.l0pht.com/), a computer security firm. That turned into "@Stake" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/@stake). "@Stake" was acquired by Symantec in 2004.
Even the ones who didn't sell out got great jobs. It's just what hackers do, now. Besides, hacker groups are dead as a cultural phenomenon. Now, they're just Internet street gangs stealing credit card info and spreading trojans, instead of spreading thought crime and information.
This is a bit snipey. Plenty of us don't value cash as highly as the American culture-complex would wish us. (eg. Listened to any hip-hop recently?) Though, the majority did sell out... and pretty hard and fast, and in one direction: the US military industrial complex and its once-removed assets such as Google. (See latest Assange book if doubting...)
hacker groups are dead as a cultural phenomenon
Disagree. We've got more outcome-oriented collectives now, such as maker spaces and Github projects. This is arguably more to the point, and an efficiency improvement on idling on IRC for years on end.
Pretty much none of them got wickedly rich. For the most part, they got a decent developer-tier salary at a tech company.
I still have old versions of their software on some Zip disks collecting dust somewhere :)