hacker != cracker (Re: Swartz, Weev & radical libertarian lexicon)

[Adam Back]

On Wed, Jan 08, 2014 at 06:05:00AM +1000, James A. Donald wrote:
>the original meaning [of hacking] was simply bad stuff done by computer -

Not that its relevant to the Aaron discussion, but I think you got that
etymology sequence wrong, the original meaning of hacker was more like doing
clever but non-malicious things with computers, aka squeezing interesting
things out of them that they were not intended or expected to do.  And/or
relatedly people were less uptight about computer access as most of them
were in open collaborative university settings so using computers was less
of a locked up possessive mind set.  Those were the days before CFAA and
Weev getting his door kicked in by a swat team for stumbling upon a broken
network API.

Hacker in the sense of cracker was a later and much hated co-option and
perversion of the term.  I expect that's what Rysiek was reacting to partly.

Seems like the original hackers lost that etymology battle however long ago.

Adam