The Hacker Ethic And Linux Kernel 2.4

vattervi writes: "Salon has an interesting article on the the work ethics of sysadmins, heavily citing the book The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age and telling the story of Salon's sysadmin as he plays with the 2.4 kernel."

Comments

sysadmin ethic

[Anonymous Coward]

wheni was a sysadmin, i rather liked having to work in an Nt shop, becuz I could show them my worth by trying to keep those damn machines up, and they paid me well! It's not ETHICAL, but t least i gotda money. where as if i worked in a shop with all *nix servers, once they were up they would have probably had me only work like 10 hours a week at the most, reducing my takehome... therefore the benefits of working with NT are certainly there

;)

Mumblings of a real hacker..

[Anonymous Coward]

These people in this ugly story are _NOT_ hackers. These are guys who enjoy playing with the latest greatest software and building new shit. The _REAL_ hackers are the ones making the code changes...something that more and more sys admins don't do. Way back in the days...all sys admins were hackers...today they just maintain the latest greatest stable stuff on their systems. The only sys admins I have _ever_ seen that are hackers can be found at places like Open AFS...legacy mature stuff that the old school sys admins still love.

Just because you use Linux or BSD or whatever..._DOES NOT_ make you a hacker...when you start contibuting...you can than call yourself a hacker.

Couple o' points

[Stormie]

1. Surely if this sysadmin was so excited about the prospect of Linux kernel 2.4.0, he would have been running one of the 2.4.0-pre n kernels on his box? Anyone who's keen enough to compile a kernel won't have spent the last year running 2.2 and fidgetting impatiently..

2. I find it interesting that he says "most hackers are able to earn their livelihood relatively easily, with enough leisure time to hack for the public good". Sure, most hackers find it easily to earn a livelihood, and a pretty damn good one at that. But I thought long work hours were commonly considered a scourge in this industry of ours? Any full time job leaves you with not too much leisure time, and if you're working much beyond the 9-to-5.. well.. I kind of doubt you'll have enough leisure time to do too much hacking. "A McDonald's cashier or a taxi driver is not so lucky". Well, maybe they're not so well paid, but I don't reckon someone working a menial job is going to have less free time than a pro geek. And you might find it easier to muster the enthusiasm to code for fun if you haven't been doing it for money all day. God knows I coded more for fun before I started working as a programmer..

Of course, if you code at work, you can always be hacking away on your own stuff without it being too obvious. That's how I taught myself Perl and Python (hey, one editor window full of code looks much like any other, from the distance between my desk and the boss's office!) ;-)

Re:Couple o' points

[karmawarrior]

"A McDonald's cashier or a taxi driver is not so lucky". Well, maybe they're not so well paid, but I don't reckon someone working a menial job is going to have less free time than a pro geek.

You'd be surprised. Speaking with people in our data checking department in my company, which employs the largest number of low-paid workers in our business, it's clear that the vast majority have second and sometimes even third jobs. I was at a coffee/bagel place a few months ago and got talking to the waitress. She saw nothing unusual in that she would be working 12 hours that day, and had jobs that kept her working 7 days a week.

I'm not saying everyone on minimum wage works like this. But it's interesting that of those who don't that I personally know, I'd put them as "hackers in another context." Example: The PADI dive instructor I know, who makes minimum wage as a dive store clerk, works relatively "normal" hours, but is clearly in it because the minimal overtime (instructing) is something he loves doing.

I rated the article as being +5 Insightful, not for what it told the rest of the world about hackers, but the comments that ought to have made a few slashdotters who make the usual comments about how anyone on minimum wage can afford to do anything and have time to do anything else and if you don't like a job, well, you can just quit it and find a better one step back and think a bit.

That said, one of the examples, the taxi driver, is maybe off base as well. Majority of taxi drivers I've met also fit into Salon's hacker ethic. Again they're doing a job they like, and do the overtime for the job as well as the money.

We're pretty lucky when it comes down to it. How many dive instructors, taxi drivers, or Slashdot reading computer programmers would swap for a collection of jobs at McDs/bagel houses, data cleaning services, and house cleaning maid services?
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"

Typical Condescending Garbage

[Phaid]

Why do they have to make their "hacker" sound like some kind of autistic retard? The visual picture their descriptions conjure up is of this guy rocking back and forth in his chair as he watches the kernel compile, repeating the GCC output under his breath as it scrolls by and exclaiming "256,981. Yeah definitely. 256,981 lines" when it's all done.

(That, and what are these examples supposed to be about? I know plenty of people who use 2.4 -- I ran the 2.3.X series pretty much for its entire duration and never had the problems they describe. Or maybe I just read the documentation.) But I digress.

Also, their idea of "the hacker ethic" sounds more like "the slacker ethic". Considering that hackers tend to work 80 hour weeks -- and not just because the threat of layoffs looms near -- I find that a bit insulting. Their assertion that "it's my life" has replaced "time is money" etc is largely missing the mark. Yes, a lot of people burned out during the dot-com boom and are no longer willing to live in their cubicles. And that's as it should be, no one should be willing to meet unreasonable demands on their time.

But the fact remains that a lot of conscienscious, dedicated hackers continnue to work a lot more than the standard 40-hour work week, whether it's actually necessary or not. If they're not really working on a company project, they're developing open source on the side, or learning Perl, or teaching themselves how device drivers work, or whatever. And the reason hackers are willing to spend this much time on what is ostensibly their career, is that they find the work interesting and stimulating. The rest of the world finds this amazing because they've settled for a career that doesn't bring them fulfillment. Tough. Do what you love, or do something else.

Re:Typical Condescending Garbage

[Schwarzchild]

I sort of agree though I got more of the impression that the sysadmin came off as a combination of someone who is:

kinda dumb + kinda enthusiastic + very busy

I find that most hackers are:

very intelligent + socially backward (sometimes) + usually busy

Re:In defense

[Andrew Leonard]

Hackers is an awesome book, one of the best books about computing culture ever written, in my opinion. The Hacker Ethic picks up on some strands that are in Hackers, and elaborates it into a theory of how hackers approach work.

Hackers: indispensable
Hacker Ethic: interesting

In defense

[Andrew Leonard]

I can't say that I'm surprised at how condescending and outright nasty many of the comments directed at Salon's sysadmin are here. The tenor of discussion at Slashdot has degenerated quite a bit since I first started reading it three or so years ago.

But I will say that the particular admin I was describing is, in my opinion, a really cool guy who is passionate about free software, works with it every day, and is knowledgeable about a ton of of complex technical issues.

I'll also say that those of you trying to pretend that sysadmins can't be hackers or vice versa are bigots, plain and simple. You're a disgrace.

My bad on the CERN/CERT typo and the freshmeat URL. Should be corrected by now.

Re:In defense

[drivers]

I haven't read the Hacker Ethic, but I have just finished reading "Hackers" by Steven Levy (great book). The book is basically about the hacker ethic illustrated by the early hackers at MIT, the hardware hackers of the '70s, and PC game programmers in the early 80's, ending with what happened to the AI lab that RMS was at.

I balked at the ~$25 price for a 200 page book (The Hacker Ethic)... If you've read "Hackers" (anyone) would you know whether this hacker ethic is in line with the book discussed in the article?

Specifically:

• Access to computers should be unlimited and total.
  
• All information should be free.
  
• Mistrust authority - promote decentralization.
  
• Hackers should be judged by their hacking not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
  
• You create art and beauty on a computer,
  
• Computers can change your life for the better.
  

Re:Hunting the wild Hacker? I think not...

[NatePuri]

Oh yeah. One more thing... and I'm reading this from my business card. My official title reads "Hacker-in-Chief"; NOW WHAT!!!!!?

Regards,

Nate

Re:Hunting the wild Hacker? I think not...

[NatePuri]

I am one of these people you describe, the difference between me and the people you describe is that I understand that work had to get done. I don't write too much code, my job is sys admin. I call my own hours, I may come in after noon, but that's because I stay until midnight. I never leave until at *least* one major weekly project is completed. But that is just me.

As to your characterization of what is a hacker. I think you may very well be in agreement with most people who write code a lot. I.e., if one does not code, then one is not a hacker. Here 'hacker' is used like some kind of title. In that sense, you are being an elitist. However, to the rest of the world if your fingers make unix go, a hacker you be. I say unix because windows is too familiar to the average person to make it seem hackerish. However, with transparent eterms and kernel compiles zooming along, the average person goes "oo you're a hacker, huh?" The distinction is one of elitest jargon vs. everday jargon.

At the Linux conference, I wouldn't say 'me hacker', but everywhere else I would.

So fella, you are a bit cranky aren't you? I can understand your gripes about the people who got no work done. But don't mistake that for all the other quirky idiosyncratic and maddening individuals who get a hell of a lot of work done all the friggin' time.

This brings me to my gripe. I'm totally pissed off by engineers who think that hackers should do what they say. Look code monkeys, just because you sit around all day reciting 'if, then, else' doesn't mean you know how to build a network of 200 puters and make WinBlaBla, Sun, Linux, BSD, HP etc., interopate and stay up all friggin' year, ok? All I have to say to you all is NIS, NFS, autofs, bind, apache, IIS, Exchange Server, Black Orifice, samba, ipfilter, ifconfig opts, mtu, dhcp, bla, bla, fuckin bla. I stay up all night keeping up on trend after trend for this specific purpose, I buy book after book know the finest distinctions between OS'es. That's my job. Don't fuck with that. [ooo meee koong foo on yoooo ya fucka] [--battle-maneuvers --go-here].

If I am a code consumer, then let me tell you... it tastes like crap, but I still have to eat it, humph...

-Nate, the self-taught, muy scripting, mucho bullshit enduring, in order to support myself while in grad school, much essential member of the clan, if 'me', then 'go', else 'fucked', sorry it ain't my fault...

It's not the work ethic but the perception ...

[LL]

I would question whether the kacker mentality is healthy in the long-run. Part of the problem is the relative newness of the "mainstream" or massification of computing technology. This naturally attracts early adopters with spare time (ie the pre-teen - professional student) segment which has a natural work approach quite disctinct from the baby-boomers. This can also be seen in places like Japan which is rebelling against the concept of corporate worker drones or samauria salarymen for life. Hwoever is this really the attitude you want to project? Given the sheer mind-numbing tedium of pouring through magalines of code, it is only natural that our mental defenses turn it into a game (in-line jokes, clever credits, etc) otherwise we'd go bonkers having no life. The question is whether this is the "professional" image one wants to retain?

If IT is to gain the natural prestige and social statues of other professions (ie not hacker but software engineering) then perhaps some careful though needs to be applied into thinking of a core concept around which you perpetuate teh good points. The medicals have the Hippocratic Oath, the lawyers have the client-attorney privilege. researchers the scientific method (repeatable evidence of theory), what has kackers got? What social/moral/ethical force is there to encourage quality code, open disclosure (e.g. witness Engineering responsibilty of professional negligence), and fair treatment of the suers and fellow hackers?

Perhaps someone should consider formulating a Code of the Hacker (CotH) like ....
#1 When in doubt, read and grok the code
#2 Honor thy source and those who have coded before thee
#3 Thou shalt not delete or corrupt data needlessly
#4 Avoid contaminating your only backup
#5 Covet not thy fellow hacker's interface or API

Perhaps the hacker mentality of caffeine-driven code-fests is a little dated (and expecially not appeal to the female-gender) and might need some seasoning to balance the serious professional aspects and the zen-like fun aspects as well.

LL

Re:It's not the work ethic but the perception ...

[Eil]

The question is whether this is the "professional" image one wants to retain?

I'm admittedly not a hacker in the sense of writing a new kernel next thursday and having it ship on sunday, but...

I am very comfortable in my geekdom and pseudo-hackerdom and hope to continue to be so until I draw my dying breath.

Re:Use test suites to test the new Linux kernels

[Salamander]

I wrote an article on Using Test Suites to Validate the New Linux Kernel.

Excellent! The article and, even more importantly, the activities to which it refers are exactly the sort of thing Linux needs most. Kudos to all who are involved in the grueling and usually thankless effort to bring Linux testing up to an acceptable level.

the most interesting quote was about freshmeat

[segmond]

"We discuss the possibility that someone has already written that script and uploaded it to the Web. We go a step further -- maybe he should write the script and get Freshmeat to link to it. He's pleased by the idea, but later, after inspecting Freshmeat's new redesign and deciding he doesn't like it, he puts the idea aside."

I wonder if this is really happening...

CERN Advisory

[omarius]

• Maybe because he and the other sysadmins were too busy upgrading Salon's version of BIND after a CERN advisory of a major security weakness.

I wonder what that CERN advisory said about BIND... Is it unstable? Will it decompose into a more stable program? What about radiation? Are billions of neutrinos, sparticles, and hadrons bombarding me right now? There's only a thin, wooden clost door in between me and the name server! Will I get super DNS powers? This is exciting!

-Omar

bad boy, you sysadmin...

[cookieman]

...and telling the story of Salon's sysadmin as he plays with the 2.4 kernel.
My mind instantly switched to prOn scenes...

Oh, wait a minute!

Re:Hunting the wild Hacker? I think not...

[Eil]

I think the main thing that mislead you was Andrew Leonard's interchanging of the words "geek" and "hacker". I would certainly qualify most PC gamers at the lanparties I go to as geeks, but almost none of them as "hackers," because they don't really hack anything. They all obviously love computers in general, as most of them are hardware geeks as well, but I don't think you can be called a "hacker" until you start tinkering around with the underlying substance that makes things work. (Be it source code or whatever.)

But, for the most part, I think being a "geek" is a resonable requirement for being able to configure, compile, and install a brand-new Linux kernel.

Re:Hunting the wild Hacker? I think not...

[Eil]

Mwahaha, this is one of the best /. posts I've read in awhile.

if your fingers make unix go, a hacker you be

This qualifies as "inspirational quote of the day" for me. :)

Re:AMEN AMEN AMEN!!!!

[Eil]

The above huge block of rant-like text is what I've been trying to tell my girlfriend [2] for the last year or so. She's one of those down-to-earth type of people (which I like), but while she likes to *say* she understands me, I have this nagging feeling that she doesn't. She would like me to spend all of my time with her, which I can theoretically do, except I wouldn't really be happy without x amount of hours in front of a CRT as well... something we both learned the hard way during Christmas break.

I think she believes I'm being overly picky about the type of college I want to attend. Most people outline their young adult lives as such:

goto COLLEGE;
COLLEGE:
for (i = 0; i < 4; i++) { learn(); }
goto WORK;

My particular pseudocode goes as such:

goto COLLEGE
COLLEGE:
if (college == 'good') { learn_something(); }
if (made_friends && learn_something) {
graduate();
}
else {
find_new_college();
}
if (job != "sucking") { work(); }

(And yes, I realize that gotos in actual code are horrendous but sometimes they're an accurate analogy to real life.)

In other words, I want to be a geek, and I want to be happy being one. The only way I can be happy is by continuous learning, not by memorizing the tab-frame layout of the WinNT networking preferences box. Going back to the girlfriend issue, she's not aware yet that the vast majority of educational institutions simply do not offer Computer Science cirriculums for those who actually want to learn and broaden their horizons. Most seem tailored to those who want to learn the basics of Microsoft Networking and then run out and make the big bucks.

Until that times comes, it's back to educating myself and letting my girlfriend get angry at me from time to time. I simply eat, breathe, live, and worship computers and I sincerely hope that will never change while trying to keep my relationship intact.

Use test suites to test the new Linux kernels

[goingware]

I wrote an article on Using Test Suites to Validate the New Linux Kernel.

You should do this kind of testing either to contribute to the kernel's development (this testing is more thorough than just casually trying it out), and especially if you're considering using a new kernel in a production system.

I welcome submissions of test suites to include in the article (or other articles to post at the Linux Quality Database - you'll see if you check out the site that there's not much there yet, but I have great hopes for doing good with it).

There have been some new suites submitted, including PostgreSQL's regression tests and one or two others that I have not yet added. I'll be updating the article soon.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

AMEN AMEN AMEN!!!!

[Chanc_Gorkon]

YES! This is what I have spoke of MANY times. I used to have many co-workers who took up computers for only one reason: money. Now, I choose computer because I love them. If I could afford it, my house would be like Bill Gate's house, but not lame (pictures changing when a certain person walks into a room....ah, no thanks! It's a little cool, but lame because of what a person would have to wear/do to have it happen.). I WANT to walk around like a MIT guy with a computer display on his head. I would not CARE what people would think. I'd be the first to stand in line for a wearable computer (ahhh....would be so nice to have telesopic vision or a heads up display. Or when someone asks you a question, you quickly look it up on your HUD with your wireless broadband.... :)). Computers ARE my life, after God and family. I could care less about having marble kitchen counter (while nice, they are not necessary). I would rather have a nice computer then a car! Besides, if I had a handheld, the bus would be better because I could read webpages instead of books. Why do I like them. I DON'T KNOW! :) I just do. Can I put them down? When I don't need them, I can. If my son needs me to do something for him, I do. Same goes for the wife. Also, the same goes when I am having non computer fun (watching TV or a movie or out for a family outing). The point is if you HATE your job, you won't do well. If you like it, you usually will do great!

OT: most intesting quote.

[jon_c]

He's pleased by the idea, but later, after inspecting Freshmeat's new redesign and deciding he doesn't like it, he puts the idea aside.


I thought this was the most interesting part personally. I don't know one geek that goes through with most anything they say. Some are worse then others, my old roommate (no naming names) had an amazing way of saying "I'm going to do xxx" every day, every day it was different. everyday he wouldn't do anything. If he did actually start on anything he said he was going to do he would stop at the first road block, anything that would cause him to stop and think, solve a problem, he would quite.

his new roommate is AMAZINGLY bad. every single time I saw him we would say "Jon, I have this great Idea! I'm going to do bla bla bla, and it's going to have bla bla bla". then sometimes (if he's serious) about it, he might doodle a diagram of some system overview.. it was always a large complicated system, never a simple (do-able) project.

Another friend, talks in theory a lot, and through ideas around, bat rarely says he's actually going to "do something" unless he means it. if he says he's going to, he'll probably at least give it an honest effort. I can respect that.

Another trend is that all of the three are braggarts, strangely in sync with there ability to lie to themselves. The "AMAZINGLY" bad one has a tenendy to say things like, "This sucks! Wednesday I have to have lunch with the CEO of the company, because my flagship product I'm working on is so important. And then the day after that, I have to have lunch with the CTO of the company!", actually ok, that verbatim.

so is it just me or do most "hackers" talk a lot of smack, and rarely do jack?

-Jon

Streamripper

Hunting the wild Hacker? I think not...

[gustar]

This article is pretentious crap. I doubt I'll bother with the book.

I use open source software all the time, like so:

Configure --options-go-here
make
make install

Doing this does not make me a hacker.

Sometimes I even have to perform small customizations to a piece of open source code prior to performing the steps mentioned above.

Doing this does not make me a hacker.

Sometimes installs have problems and I need to review and make small fixes to what make install (or what ever the installer is) is doing in order for things to install cleanly.

Doing this does not make me a hacker.

What all these things make me is an educated consumer of open source code, nothing more.

Hackers are the people who actually do the hard work of the writing the software that the rest of us use to get our work done.

I really doubt the glorified sys admin in the article will be writing the next version of Perl or Apache anytime soon.

He's a code consumer like the rest of us, and apparently one with out much in the way of time management skills.

Which brings me to my second point...

Our development group "had" two induhviduals who exhibited many of the same behaviors as the one mentioned in the article.

They spent inordinate amounts of time building the current latest pen-ultimate Linux desktop, spent weeks are the holy grail of the perfect configuration of enlightment, had impressive arrays of hardware on their desk, were always suggesting that we use some obscure but "cool" open source tool to do a job and then spending weeks trying to build said tool only to come up weeks later with neither the tool or the work completed. On top of this they would come and go as they pleased, showing up at 11 and then bailing at 5, as well as constantly blowing off meetings.

After about 5-6 months of zero productivity they were both fired, and good riddance.

And now my point, the behavior of these two induhviduals seemed very close to that described in the article. This behavior seems to be linked to being a hacker and in fact the article is promoting the book "The Hacker Ethic". I think this is erroneous; the name of the article should be changed to "Hunting the wild poser" or maybe even "hunting the wild wanna-be".

Re:Hunting the wild Hacker? I think not...

[update()]

Seriously. I've seen a bunch of people install Linux, having read statements about how:
There are equivalent desktop applications for everything you use under Windows:
Word -- AbiWord, KWord, Siag
Excel -- KSpread, Gnumeric, Pathetic Writer
Photoshop -- Gimp
and so forth. They discover that while it's easy to compile a table like that, the quality of those Linux apps ranges from slipshod to unusable and wonder what the hell the Linux advocates are thinking.

The answer is that those advocates aren't using Linux for any real work - they're just downloading, patching and compiling over and over again. If that's what you enjoy, then KSpread and Gnumeric are much better than Excel. And I love tinkering with KSpread but I get my work done in Excel.

And for crying out loud, of course KDE works with 2.4. As if no one thought of 2.4 support until this pinhead and his friend decided to add it?

The KDE 2.0 installation has been fraught with setbacks and unexplained crashes, and is very poorly documented. "I'm finding this difficult," says the sysadmin, fully aware of the implication that if this is tricky for him to master, then it would be well nigh impossible for the average person.

I'm a biologist, not a hacker, and compiling KDE is trivial.

One quibble, though, gustar; penultimate means "second-most," not "most."

What a great article

[SupahVee]

Now, if I could only get my last 4 bosses to read and comprehend it.

Fortunately, I am now working at a place where this sort of behavior is encouraged. Do your work, work as hard as you need to to get the job done, and work as much as you need to stay sane. We have almost daily Nerf Wars in the office, even the sales people join in sometimes. We have fun, and everyone is striving to learn and absorb more information, which when it all boils down, that's what the 'hacker ethic' is all about anyway.

What's the word for someone who ...

[JWhitlock]

What's the word for someone who looks like a troll, sound like a troll, but isn't a troll?

Yes, you have a valid point - as skillful as a sys admin might be, sys admin != hacker. But it's also a skill that is not really trainable. You have to understand these beasts, these boxen, you have to grok rebuilding kernels, understand stacks and weak points, and be able to decipher CERN reports. It is a skilled industry.

As another said: To the casual Windows user, anyone with these skills is a hacker. These people also know that they would never put hacker on a business card, never expect to hear Cox's name mentioned in the same breath as their own.

It seems easy and trivial to us, but these are skills, often bought with the currency of time, a social life, and popularity in high school. We are being rewarded now, with high-paying jobs, management that doesn't understand us but lets us do our thing, and the ability to play with our favorite toys. Surprise, Surprise, we keep the business going, in a business where they are starting to measure the dollars lost per minute of server down time.

The hacker ethic is alive and well, even in these folks who touch code once every two weeks. Don't start pissing games because they haven't re-written a kernel.

Hacking and money...

[frob2600]

Hackers, Himanen tells us, have a different relationship to money than normal folks do. They are not ruled by it; they don't do what they do out of a desire for money. They program because programming is intrinsically fascinating, and they share because sharing is righteous.

Although many people out there might call this bull-poop, the idea certainly is more than just existant. I would say it is almost prevelent. It is very easy to confuse a good programmer with a hacker until you add all the traits together and while this one is not required, I look for it more than the others. I can respect a person more who gets into computers for the love of it and not the money. Too many people here at my school just want to make ungodly salaries and think computers are the way to do it.

I never was this way (desiring large sums of money). I still am not this way. Even though I am not a poor programmer, I find it feels wrong to charge people for something I enjoy doing so much. Although I get beer out of it sometimes. ;-)

I think this boils down to the one precept I base my life on. Sell what you need to survive (well maybe survive comfortably) and give the rest away. It is nice to spread $8.00 for two weeks of food, but you wouldn't want to do that once you are out of college.

"When you enjoy this as much as I do, accepting money has to be prostitution in 48 out of 50 states!" -- annonymous hacker after 27 hour coding session.

---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,

Weren't hackers supposed to be naughty?

[mech9t8]

Mmm. Disagreements based on semantics. "I define hacker as A." "I define hacker as B." Well, to add my two cents...

Call me old fashioned, but a hacker, IMHO, is someone who "hacks" into things... whether it be Defense Department computers or computer game code or whatever. There has to mystery about it; there has to be figuring out how things work on your own, understanding the computer at the most basic level, and then fooling or changing the system...

I blame the media. In their urge to make computers sound cool, everyone's a hacker. It used to be an elite group. (One I'm not, BTW, in any way part of... except maybe for when I used to use a hex editor to give myself unlimited lives or money in computer games...<g>)

I don't think anything done with setting-up or configuring open-source, by definition, could be considered "hacking", since it's all there in the open. Discovering and exploiting its weaknesses, on the other hand, could be.