The Hacker Ethic:
Access to computers — and anything that may teach you something about the way the world works — should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
All Information should be free
Mistrust Authority — Promote Decentralization
Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, gender, sexual orientation, or position.
You can create art and beauty on a computer.
Computers can change your life for the better.
From Hackers Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy. Patched by Johnny Fusion =11811=
1. The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible.
2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.
From the Jargon File http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker-ethic.html