_________________________________________________________ Guide to (mostly) Harmless Hacking Vol. 6 Real Hackers No. 1: Eric S. Raymond _________________________________________________________ "Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the UNIX operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker... "There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people `crackers' and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word `hacker' to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end. "The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them... Hackerdom's most revered demigods are people who have written large, capable programs that met a widespread need and given them away, so that now everyone uses them. "If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as smart as you think you are. And that's all I'm going to say about crackers." -- Eric S. Raymond, http://locke.ccil.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html Who are the real hackers? Who are the people we can admire and model our lives upon? The Real Hackers series of these Guides introduces these people. We start with Eric S. Raymond. He is well known in the hacker world. He epitomizes all that a real hacker should be. He has wide ranging programming experience: C, LISP, Pascal, APL, FORTRAN, Forth, Perl, and Python; and is proficient in assembly language for the Z80, 80x86, and 680xx CPUs. He also knows French, Spanish and Italian. Raymond is one of the core developers of Linux, and a major force in the ongoing evolution of the EMACS Lisp language. He maintains fetchmail, a freeware utility for retrieving and forwarding mail from POP2/POP3/IMAP mailservers. But Raymond is perhaps most famous among real hackers as the man who maintains the hacker jargon file. You can read it at http://www.ccil.org/jargon. He also maintains numerous other well-regarded FAQ and HOWTO documents, including the "Java-On-Linux HOWTO," the "Linux Distributions HOWTO," the "PC-Clone UNIX Hardware Buyer's Guide," the "So You Want To Be A UNIX Wizard? FAQ" (aka The Loginataka), and the "How To Become A Hacker FAQ" -- see http://locke.ccil.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html (quoted above). Raymond also founded and runs the Chester County InterLink. This is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that gives free InterNet access to the residents of Chester County, Pennsylvania. At last count, it had over two thousand users and was gaining about fifty a week. Raymond also has written the funniest hacker humor ever: "Unix Wars," which builds upon the really, really ancient hacker humor article, "DEC Wars." You may read it at http://www.devnull.net/docs/unixwars.html. Raymond is the author of many books. They include "The New Hackers Dictionary," now in its 3rd edition (MIT Press 1996, ISBN 0-262-68092-0), and "Learning GNU Emacs," (2nd edition, O'Reilly Associates, ISBN 0-937175-84-6). He was the principal researcher and author of "Portable C and UNIX Systems Programming," (Prentice-Hall ISBN 0-13-686494-5) (the name "J. E. Lapin" appearing on the cover was a corporate fiction). The advent of the September 1996 third edition of "Portable C..." led to interviews with Raymond in Wired magazine (August 1996) and People magazine (October 1996). "Wait, wait!" you say. "I'm on hacker IRC channels and hacker mail lists all the time and I have never heard of Raymond! Why, he doesn't even have a kewl handle like Mauve Knight or Ei8ht or DisordeR. Sheesh, Raymond isn't even a member of some 31337 gang with a name like K-rad Doomsters of the Apocalypse." Welcome to the world of real hackers. As Raymond points out in his "How To Become A Hacker FAQ," there are two kinds of hackers: real hackers who aspire to learn and create, and the phonies who think crashing or breaking into a computer proves they are geniuses. Guess which kind you usually meet at 2600 meetings, on IRC channels with names like #hack, on news groups such as alt.2600 and alt.hacker, and mail lists with names like DC-stuff and HH-Chat? That is not to say that every single person you will meet there is a lamer and a poser. But few real hackers will put up with the flames, criminal mentality and ignorance of the majority of folks you encounter there. Where do you meet real hackers like Raymond? You might encounter a few of them at the annual Def Con or Hope on Planet Earth conferences. (Raymond, however, asserts this is "not likely.") You will, however, find real hackers by the hundreds at the Usenix conferences (see http://www.usenix.org/events/), or by the thousands in the free software movement. ********************************************************* Newbie note: How can you get involved in the free software movement and get to know the hacker demigods? For starters, try GNU. GNU stands for "Gnu's Not UN-IX." The GNU project is an international effort that is being run by the Free Software Foundation. See http://www.gnu.org for more information. Are you wondering, "Gnu's Not UN-IX? Whaddaya mean?" Be warned, real hackers have a twisted sense of humor. GNU is a recursive acronym. When the mere thought of a recursive acronym can throw you into gales of laughter, you will know you are turning into a real hacker. ********************************************************* "The free software movement?" you ask. "How come no one ever, ever talks about coding operating system kernels or new scripting languages on alt.2600 or dc-stuff?" Yup, you guessed it, it's because the majority of those folks just want to f*** things up. Real hackers aspire to create software. Not just exploit code for f***ing up computers. But to create serious, big time software. The free software movement is where Raymond and his friends -- folks such as Linus Torvalds (the fellow who launched and ran the Linux project that created the operating system most widely used by hackers) and Larry Wall (creator of Perl, one of the top two programming languages used by hackers) work together. Much of the software these hacker demigods write is copylefted. A copyleft is -- yes, you are right, a copyleft is another example of twisted hacker humor. But basically a copyleft says you have the right to reuse copylefted code in your own software, and even sell it, and make money on it, with only one condition. You must make the source code to your software available for anyone else who may wish to use it in writing their own software. Want to hang out with the hacker demigods? Have you learned to program pretty well yet? If so, you may discover a warm welcome from the GNU folks and others in the free software movement. How did Raymond become one of the tribal elders of the hacker world? It all started, he remembers, in 1968 when he was only 11. "My father worked for Sperry Univac. On days off he would take me in to play with the 1108. It was worth about $8 million -- in 1968 dollars!" Raymond remembers it being a gigantic computer housed in an air-conditioned room. Back then it was a major feat for anyone to get their hands on a computer. Back then they were primitive, expensive and fragile. Raymond remembers reading the ACM journal in 1974 and dreaming about how wonderful it would be if he could ever get his hands on that new operating system they were creating -- Unix. While in high school he did manage to get access -- via teletype -- to a TTY (a verrry primitive terminal) at Ursinus College (located in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania). With that TTY he was able to use the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System computer. But it was mostly just good for playing games. Raymond began college as a math and philosophy major. But in 1976 he got his hands on an account with a DEC PDP-10 -- and a connection to ARPAnet, the early form of today's Internet. "I was seduced by the computing side." Raymond soon switched to computer science. While on ARPAnet, visiting a computer at MIT, Raymond discovered the Hacker Jargon File. Raymond was hooked. He decided he would become a hacker. A real hacker. In 1983 Raymond printed out the jargon file, bound it as a book, titled it "Understanding Your Hacker," and presented it to his boss. His boss loved it. Back in 1983, few people were afraid of those who called themselves hackers. Back then people were aware that hackers were odd and brilliant characters. But that was before crowds of vandals and criminals started claiming they, too, were hackers. Journalists, at a loss as to what to call that new breed of digital gang bangers, started calling them hackers, too. Meanwhile, Raymond came to the realization that he not only had a talent for programming -- he could write texts really well, too. In 1987 he updated "DEC Wars" to create the immortal "Unix Wars," which will finally see print for the first time in Carolyn Meinel's "Happy Hacker" book (American Eagle Publications, in press, due out in late Feb. 1998). In 1990 Raymond decided to spend a weekend updating the Hacker Jargon File. When Monday morning rolled around, he had quadrupled the size of the file. He contacted the folks who maintained it, who were delighted to let him take it over. Not long afterward, he published it as "The New Hacker's Dictionary." So what is Raymond doing today? "I do most of my programming in C," he tells us, "but I still think in Lisp." He works "the odd consulting job, technical reviews of books for publishers like O'Reilly." Adds Raymond, laughing, "They know I know where all the bodies are buried." Where does Raymond see the hacker culture going? "It used to be hard to acculturate, hard to find the hacker community. But now it's expanding tremendously, thanks to the Linux phenomenon. Linux really made a difference. Now we have a common goal, and a universal platform for people's software projects. Perl has had a similar effect, providing us with a cross-platform tool kit." Raymond sees some hope even in the fast-growing, yet incredibly destructive "cracker" scene (crackers are people who break into computers). "People in the cracker community play awhile, then eventually the bright ones end up coming over to the free software culture. Many of them write to me." Raymond says he has communicated with many people who have gone through a digital vandal stage, only to eventually wake up and realize they wanted to feel good about themselves by making the world a better place. So, how many future hacker demigods are reading this Guide? Maybe quite a few. May the Source Code be with you if you should choose to quest for hacker fame the Raymond way! _______________________________________________________________________ Where are those back issues of GTMHHs and Happy Hacker Digests? Check out the official Happy Hacker Web page at http://www.happyhacker.org. Us Happy Hacker folks are against computer crime. We support good, old-fashioned hacking of the kind that led to the creation of the Internet and a new era of freedom of information. So please don't email us about any crimes you may have committed. We won't be impressed. We might even call the cops on you! To subscribe to Happy Hacker and receive the Guides to (mostly) Harmless Hacking, please email hacker@techbroker.com with message "subscribe happy-hacker" in the body of your message. Copyright 1997 Carolyn P. Meinel <cmeinel@techbroker.com>. These Guides to (mostly) Harmless Hacking are, in the spirit of copyleft, free for anyone to forward, post, print out and even make into books to sell -- just so long as you keep this info attached to this Guide so your readers know where to go to get free GTMHHs. R.J. Gosselin, Sr. ~+~+~+~~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+ Editor-In-Chief -- Happy Hacker Digest ~+~+~+~~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+ "There is no way you're describing our system, she could never have gotten past our security. But I'm going to find her and see that she's prosecuted ... she broke the law, and she's going to pay!" President of "Blah Blah Bank" -->>> Does anybody ELSE see a small discrepancy here ??????? ***************************************** For full story (and many others), download "External Threats to Computer Security in Networked Systems" from Winn Schwartau's InfoWar.com bookstore @ www.infowar.com