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START DOKS......
                       ______________________________
                      |                              |
                      | An ESLF Republication of.... |
Original Publication: |______________________________| >Whole Earth Magazine
Issue:  =------->     |                              | >May 1985
Pages: =---------->   |       H A C K E R S '        | >44-55
                      |       -  ---------  -        |
                      |       Conference 1984        |
                      |                              |
                      |       "Keep Designing"       |
Let us now praise     |                              | Story of the Hackers'
famous hackers"       | How the Information Economy  | Conference. Famous,
                      | is being created and shaped  | infamous, and un-
 was the headline in  | by the Hacker Ethic          | known, they praised
 the Time magazine    |______________________________? each other with 
                                                       nightlong attention 
=------------------------------------------>           exuberance.
   =------------------------------->

    think hackers -- dedicated, innovative, irreverent computer programmers
- are the most interesting and effective body of intellectuals since the
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   ramers of the U.S. Constitution.
     No other group that I know of has set out to liberate a technology and
ucceeded. They not only did so against the active disinterest of corporate
merica, their success forced corporate America to adopt their style in the
nd. In reorganizing the Information Age around the individual, via personal
omputers, the hackers may well have saved the American economy. High tech is
ow something that mass consumers do, rather than just have done to them, and
hat's a hot item in the world. In 1983 America had 7O percent of the $18
illion world software market, and growing.
     The quietest of all the '6Os subcultures has emerged as the most
nnovative and most powerful -- and most suspicious of power.
     Some of the shyer people you'll ever meet, hackers are also some of the
unniest. The standard memory of the Hackers' Conference is of three days and
wo long nights of nonstop hilarity.
     These supposed lone wolves, proud artists, in fact collaborate with
lee. Though famous as an all-male tribe, they have zero separatist jokes in
heir style; they comfortably welcomed the four female hackers (of 125 total)
t the conference, and a couple of romances blossomed.
     Like the prose of poets, there is impressive economy in the conversation
f hackers, whose life work is compressing code, after all. What follows is
n only-mildly-edited transcript of one morning discussion on The Future of
he Hacker Ethic, moderated by Steven Levy. Thirty-six voices are heard. Some
re millionaires, some are quite poor. In how they treat each other, you
annot tell the difference.
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                                                              -Stewart Brand
_  _______________________________________________________________________  _
 Some of the most high-powered pioneers in the computer business were 
to reassess their origins. In a now intensely commercial business, they
ound they still were wanting to keep the faith in what they variously called
he hacker drive, the hacker instinct, the Hacker Ethic.
  _______________________________________________________________________  _

          DISCUSSIONS FROM THE HACKERS' CONFERENCE, NOVEMBER 1984
          -| ------------------------------------------------- |-
STEVEN LEVY (author of "Hackers") : The Hacker Ethic, as I think all of you
now, isn't something which back at MIT in the early '6Os people would raise
heir hand and say, "I vow to follow the hacker ethic." It's a term I used to
escribe what I felt was a shared philosophy, not only of the hackers at MIT,
ut the people in the Homebrew Computer Club who designed the first small
omputers in the mid-'7Os, and some of the younger people who started hacking
ith those small computers later on.
BILL BURNS (Homebrew-era hobbyist) : Steve, can a person be a hacker without
eing the kind of super-star or wizard that you're talking about in the book?
an someone be a low-level hacker just because he wants to have fun and an
ntellectual curiosity about the computer? Even though maybe he's not very
ood as a coder?
STEVEN LEVY : One issue that I found at MIT was that some people were
omplaining for that very reason -- that you had to be a "winner," you had to
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   e rally good to be considered a hacker.
BRUCE WEBSTER (co-author of SUNDOG, a great capitalists-in-space game) : One
f the ironies in that is that "hacker" originally denoted someone who wasn't
ery good. It was someone who was not skilled professionally but tried to
ake up in volume what they couldn't produce in quality. (laughter) Or at
east he was using a shotgun rather than a high-powered rifle.
RICHARD STALLMAN (MIT system hacker, author of EMACS) : You're always gonna
ind that if there's a community of real wizards they're gonna lose patience
ith the people who aren't. That doesn't mean that they can't be real
ackers.
VOICE : The question is, "Can you hack in BASIC?"
CHORUS : Nooooo!
ROBERT WOODHEAD (co-author of WIZARDRY, the classic role-playing adventure
ame) : Only if you're very very good can you hack in BASIC. (laughter,
pplause)
BRIAN HARVEY (former MIT and Atari hacker, now working with kids) : The term
hack" at MIT predates computer hacking. The way it started out, there were
wo kinds of people. There were "tools," who were the ones who went to all
heir classes and when they weren't in class they were in the library. And
hen there were "hackers," who never went to class and slept all day and did
omething or other all night. Before it was computers it was model railroads,
r telephones, or movies, or Chinese food, or anything. Hacking started out
s not something technical (although it tended to be technical, because this
s MIT we're talking about), but a sort of approach to what's important in
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   ife. It really means being a hobbyist and taking your hobby seriously. If
rogramming, for example, is something that you do on Sunday afternoons and
he rest of the time you don't think about it, then you're not a hacker. But
ou don't necessarily have to be a star to be a hacker.
Now, if you're at the MIT A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) Lab, at least if you
ere there when I was there, you did have to be a star in order not to get
umped on a lot. And that was the problem. It was something that I hated very
uch.
DENNIS BROTHERS (author of MACTEP, the first telecommunications program for
he Macintosh) : It should be pointed out that, at least by the time I got
here, '64 or so, "hack" meant "a prank," plain and simple, and the better
he prank the better the hack. Things like the big moon at the Harvard-Yale
ame was the ultimate hack.
PHIL AGRE (MIT A.I. Lab) : These days at the A.I. Lab, the word "hack" is
ery, very diffuse. It is one of the very large number of content-free
eneric words, like "frob" and "the right thing," that fill the hacker's
ictionary. I get the impression from the olden days that it once meant
omething more focused, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it was.
STEVEN LEVY : Well, without focusing a whole lot on the word, I think there's
retty much an agreement here that there's a resentment of using the word
otally to mean breaking into computer systems, and we are talking about it
n a broader sense. How much of what we see now in programming has that same
ind of devotion, non-dilettantism, that we saw in the days when people had
o stay up all night just to get computer time?
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   DOUG CARLSTON (founder and president of Broderbund, publisher of computer
ames) : May I protest just a little bit? When we were hacking around in the
id-'6Os at Harvard, it was not the engineering students who were the
ackers. It was the liberal arts majors whose only computer time available
as if they gummed up the locks and snuck into the building late at night
ecause they weren't allowed to sign up for the stuff. You did everything by
rial and error, because we didn't have any courses, we didn't have access to
nything other than manuals, and as far as I'm aware the whole group of
idnight programmers there were people who didn't have any real functional
se for what they were doing at all. So we called ourselves "hackers."
BRUCE BAUMGART (early Stanford A.I. hacker) : I was at Harvard in the same
ears when I found the PDP-I at the Cambridge electron accelerator and to
tay up all night with it was just incredible. You could roll in at 9 P.M.
hen the physicists had left and you could stay there till 9 A.M. when they
olled back in. Do it night after night. I made it to classes but I slept
hough them.
STEVE WITHAM (Xanadu, which is a scheme for a worldwide database and writing
ystem founded by Ted Nelson) : It's not so much a hacker ethic as a hacker
nstinct. It's sort of like the baby ducks when they see their first moving
bject. (laughter)
RICHARD STALLMAN : You see your first computer language and you think, "This
anguage is perfect." (laughter)
MARK MILLER (Xanadu) : The computer itself is really the first moving object
n some sense that any of use have seen. I think that what creates the hacker
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   rive (I won't call it a hacker ethic, and I want to argue about that) is
hat there's a sense, "There's something terribly important here." It goes
eyond the effect that this things can have on the world and what I can do
ith it and all that. "There's something essential here to understand and I
on't know what it is yet." I still don't know what it is.
STEVE WOZNIAK (designer of the Apple computer, co-founder of Apple Computer
nc.) : I think the hacker drive represents the children in us. Children love
o discover, explore, create something a little beyond what they could
efore. In school you have the courses that teach you the problem and the
olution, whereas the hackers tended to be just bright enough to take the
ittle starting points, the mathematical tools, and build up a solution of
heir own, and they could discover the optimum solution of the day. The
acker motivation is what's different. They were intrinsically motivated; the
hallenge of solving the puzzle was the only reward. The rewards were in
heir head. It was like a hobby, whereas in the outside world they would have
 job, careers, advancements, salaries -- extrinsic rewards.
MARK MILLER : The reason I argue against the "hacker ethic": I think that
teve Levy's book was wonderful and I enjoyed it a lot, but I very much
esented the way it, I think, tried to shoehorn in this idea that hackers as
 group were necessarily against the idea of intellectual property. I
onsidered myself a hacker in school, I consider myself a hacker now, and
've always thought that the idea of intellectual property was a good one.
RICHARD STALLMAN : There is definitely a tendency for hackers to not put up
ith someone who wants to deliberately obstruct them from doing something
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   hat's a fun hack. If somebody says, "It's useful for my purposes to prevent
eople from doing this in-itself-innocent activity, such as prevent people
rom logging in if I haven't given them accounts, or prevent people from
unning this program just because I'll get less money if they can run this
rogram," ...
VOICE : And use lots of undocumented entry points.
RICHARD STALLMAN : If the person doesn't see a good reason why he shouldn't
un that program or why he shouldn't use that computer, if he's a hacker,
e'll tend to view the bureaucracy that stops him as a challenge rather than
s an authority that he must respect.
BILL BURNS : The drive to do it is so strong that it sweeps other things
side. I think this is one of the big differences between the people that do
heir hacking on computers that cost a lot and are owned by other people, and
he people that do their hacking on micros where they own it. If you own the
icro there's no us and them, nobody's preventing you from doing anything but
ourself.
RICHARD STALLMAN : There's still copy-protection, and the fact that you don't
et the source [codes]; you can't change the program around and learn
omething.
STEVEN LEVY : I want to answer Mark's point about intellectual property. I
ever meant to say that the MIT people were these fantastic people who didn't
ant to make any money ever. The fact was, for example, in '61, when Steve
ussell wrote SPACEWAR [the earliest and greatest computer game for 12 years]
s a hack and some people in the room helped improve it, the improvements
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   ame because it was an open program. Of course, Steve couldn't possibly have
ade any money by releasing SPACEWAR as a product, since I think there were
nly fifty PDP-Is in total made. Because he had that advantage that no one
as tempting him, it was very natural to just leave the program in the
rawer, let anyone look at the code, improve it, and what happened was you
ot a much better product from it being a universal property. In some more
serious" things like assemblers and compilers and all sorts of utility
rograms, the same system benefited everyone there. I think things happened
hat wouldn't have happened if programs were sequestered away and kept
roprietary.
UNIDENTIFIED HACKER : There's one community in which this system does work,
hat's academe, in particular the community that MIT is. In academia you're
alued by how much you publish. The whole point is to discover something and
t the end give it away. And if I could get a reasonable full professorship
riting software and giving it away, I'd be very happy to do that.
What I'm doing is something like science but different from science, because
n science I'm pushing the boundaries discovering new things. But only in
omputers do those things that I discover wrap around and increase my ability
o discover the next thing. Computers have this nice feedback, positive
eedback, that everything I do on my computer makes it better for me doing
ore things on my computer. No other field works that way.
VOICE : Organic chemistry works that way. All fields work that way.
BRUCE BAUMGART : I think we've forgotten something there, which is the bad
ights at the lab, when the hackers stepped on each other's toes, when you
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   ere trying to get a paper done and somebody was hacking the text editor. You
ere trying  to take a television picture, and somebody was running music
sing up all the disk space. There was anarchy. The big dogs would survive.
ou would go home, your stuff undone, because somebody bigger than you and
ore powerful than you and knew more codes, whatever, had stepped on you, or
our disks or your pictures or something. Didn't you have bad times? Or were
ou always the biggest dog on the machine.
RICHARD STALLMAN : I always tried to oppose having it be a society of dog eat
og. I never tried to eat the dogs that were smaller than me. Whenever a
erson tried to act toward me as if I were above him, I'd always say, "I'm
ot above you; do what you think you should do; you shouldn't get orders from
e." And if somebody thought he was above me, I would say, "You can't give me
rders. See if you can get me fired; I want to do what I want."
BRIAN HARVEY : I think we're trying much too hard for a sort of unanimity
ere that doesn't exist about what all of us hackers are like. For example,
f you want to bring up the word "ethics" -- I felt very uncomfortable last
ight with a couple of people who got up and talked about how they made their
iving by stealing from the telephone company. I think it's one thing to be a
igh school kid wanting to show off that you're capable of making a phone
all without paying for it, and it's something else to be an adult being in
he career of encouraging people to be thieves.
STEVE WOZNIAK : I'd like to discuss the telephone topic from a hacker
erspective, and it applies to software piracy. There are some people that
ctually have money and are ethical. Back then we went out and treated
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   elephone blue boxing and the like as a fun exploration of the phone system.
ow could we make every call in the world, in every nook and cranny and all
hat, but I'll tell you, my phone bill as a college student at Berkeley was
ery high because I paid for all the calls I would have paid for anyway. I
nly used the phone system to explore the network. Some pirates copy software
nd they'll copy everything and put it in their collection, but if they find
omething that they do like and decide it's a good one, they'll go out an buy
t because the producer deserves the money.
BURRELL SMITH (designer of the Macintosh) : I think one of the common threads
f hacking is that all of us want a very pure model of what we're working on.
owadays we're all very complex, we have stock options, salaries, and careers
nd stuff. Back then it was the joy of being absorbed, being intoxicated by
eing able to solve this problem. You would be able to take the entire world
ith its horrible problems and boil it down to a bunch of microchips or
hatever we were hacking.
I think another aspect of that is that hackers can do almost anything and be
 hacker. You can be a hacker carpenter. It's not necessarily high tech. I
hink it has to do with craftsmanship and caring about what you're doing. The
oy of seeing your stuff work is the excitement.
STEVEN LEVY : Yeah, but aren't there contradictions you have to deal with
hen those stock options and things like that get in the way? Homebrew had a
eriod before there was a whole lot of money, when people would come in and
ay, "Here's the plans to this computer we're coming out with." Then there
tarted to be secrets kept. How do you keep things going forward as much as
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   ossible when you have to keep those secrets, when you have allegiance to
our company and its proprietary stuff?
BRUCE BAUMGART : You just graduated from the academic to the commercial.
here's many worlds, and I think the worlds overlap.
RICHARD STALLMAN : The question is, does one of them eat up the other so that
t goes away? That's what seems to happen.
TED NELSON (author of Computer Lib/Dream Machines, founder of Xanadu) : A
erspective that hasn't been mentioned is that like the Homebrew Club, people
ad jobs. As Thomas Jefferson said, "I make war so that my grandchildren can
tudy philosophy." The person who is studying philosophy is at the top of a
ood chain. (laughter, applause) The problem when the philosophers find they
an sell philosophy is that suddenly it's the bottom of a food chain again.
nly as long as it wasn't something that was commercially available could it
ave this pure aspect.
JOHN JAMES (FORTH hacker) : There's a certain kind of contradiction that
e're still dealing with in the world of FORTH, where the public domain is
he soul of it and it's also the curse. The advantage of a programming
anguage is that you can do anything you want to do, so you need complete
ccess to the source code, of course, and they you need to be able to use the
roducts in any way you want without having to let somebody look at your
ooks in the future time. If that's not available, then the advantages of
ORTH really aren't there. But the problem is that if everything is public
omain, then how do you support elaborate systems development and so on?
hat's what we really haven't dealt with.
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   RICHARD GREENBLATT (from MIT days "the archetypal hacker...the hacker's
acker" --Hackers) : I think it's very fundamental that source codes be made
vailable. I don't equate that with giving them away necessarily. I think it
ight be possible to work out some means by which a source code was available
nd yet it was licensed, on a basis that didn't involve a great deal of
ureaucrat overhead to the proceedings. If that could be done then you would
et the best of both worlds. The people who had written something originally
ould have the benefit of some royalties; they would also have somewhere in
here "copyright so-and-so" and it would be recorded that they were
esponsible for a particular piece of code.
Having thought about this a lot, I've come up with only a few ideas to try to
ake it practical. One of them I think is that any such arrangement should
ave an exponential tailoff. In the first year the royalties should be such
nd such percent; after another year the royalty goes down one-half of what
s was previous, or something like that -- so that the royalty pie doesn't
ust get bigger and bigger, but the people who did it originally eventually
ecay out, and the people who've contributed more recently get the benefits.
STEVE WOZNIAK : Hackers frequently want to look at code, like operating
ystems, listings, and the like, to learn how it was done before them. Source
hould be made available reasonably to those sort of people. Not to copy, not
o sell, but to explore and learn from and extend.
ROBERT WOODHEAD : Well, as a dedicated capitalist exploiter of the masses and
unning dog lackey of the bourgeois, I find that the software that I write
sually falls into two different categories. There are finished products like
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   IZARDRY that I sell and make a living on, and then there are the tools that
 wrote to build those products. The tools I will give away to anybody. But
he product, that's my soul in the product. I don't want anyone fooling with
hat. I don't want anyone hacking into that product and changing it, because
hen it won't be mine. It's like somebody looking at a painting and saying,
Well, I don't like that color over there, so I'll just take a can of paint
nd change it."
JERRY POURNELLE (science fiction writer, columnist in Byte magazine) : You
ever had to deal with editors. (laughter)
ROBERT WOODHEAD : You I do. I'll tell 'em to got to hell. On the other hand,
f somebody sees something I did and says to me, "How did you do that?" I'll
ell 'em in a minute. I'll give them all the information they need so that
hey can go out and do something better, because what I want to see is really
reat stuff. That's why all the tools I've developed when I've been working
n the Lisa, I regularly send them off to Apple so that they can get them out
here, because I know they're gonna help somebody. Then something really
reat's gonna come out and take away all the market sales of my product. Then
'm gonna have to go out and write a better one.
BOB WALLACE (author and distributor of PC-WRITE', an outstanding word
rocessing program for IBM PCs and compatibles) : We give away source with
ur product, and we haven't found it to be a problem. We do what we call
Shareware." We give away PC-WRITE, and it seems to be supporting use, you
now.
When I started, I wanted to do product and I wanted it to be self-supporting.
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                    didn't want to do it for another company and have somebody else have
ontrol over it. I wanted to have control over it and I wanted to make a
iving. Not having a lot of money for advertising, I figured the way to
istribute it was, you know, word of disk. Diskettes are a new medium that I
on't think people have realized how easy they are to copy and what that
eans, but it gives us a distribution channel.
It's very hard to get shelf space in stores. But most people choose their
oftware based on recommendations by other people -- 4O percent, I think.
ext comes product reviews and next comes advertising. With PC-WRITE, people
an not only recommend it by they can give it to somebody. People want to
eel like they can use the software for a month or two and see, "Is this my
oftware?" How many people here have bought a $5OO package and discovered,
Well, it isn't quite what I need," and you're out $5OO?
STEVEN LEVY : You do get royalties?
BOB WALLACE : Yeah, people do send me money. People after they're using it
ant to feel safe, they want to feel like there's support, they want to feel
espectable and part of a larger process, and they want to support companies
hey like. So they send us money. Support includes a newsletter and updates
nd phone support and the source code. We've done fairly well. We've sold
,4OO $1O diskettes, and about 1,7OO people then registered for $75. Then we
lso sold some on an OEM basis [Original Equipment Manufacturer, where a
ardware maker or distributor includes software with the machine purchase], a
ouple thousand that way, because once you're out, and people have heard of
ou, then you can start working quantity deals where people'll buy your
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   ource and modify it and send you royalties.
STEVEN LEVY : Was all that solely a marketing decision?
BOB WALLACE : It was a way to do what I wanted to do without getting involved
ither in another company or with venture capital. And giving software away
s a lot of fun. You get great letters and great phone calls, people are very
ppreciative, and they give you some great ideas. At the same time we'll
ross about $225,OOO this year. It's supporting two of us; we're adding a
hird person. So you can start a small company that way. I don't know how far
e can get, I don't know how many people would send in voluntary registration
oney to Microsoft or something like that.
STEVE WOZNIAK : In a company sometimes a product gets developed and the
ompany decides it doesn't fit a market, it won't sell. In that case like
hat the company should be very free to quickly give it to the engineer,
egal release; "It's yours, take it out and start your own company." But
ometimes the companies, because they own the product, will squash it and
ay, "You cannot have it, even though we're not gonna put it out, and nobody
lse in the world's gonna get it." That's a hiding of information, and that
s wrong.
STEWART BRAND (author of "Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the
omputer Bums," 1972) : It seems like there's a couple of interesting
aradoxes that we're working here. That's why I'm especially interested in
hat Bob Wallace has done with PC-WRITE and what Andrew Fluegelman did before
hat with PC-TALK. On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because
t's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   ife. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of
etting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two
ighting against each other.
STEVE WOZNIAK : Information should be free but your time should not.
STEWART BRAND : But then, at what point of amplification is your time being
o well rewarded that it's getting strange or so under-rewarded that it's
trange? There's problems there with the market.
Then there's another paradox which is especially visible here. This
onference is primarily programmers, almost no one who is primarily
arketing. In the last year or so the marketing people drove the business,
nd they're having a touch year. (laughter) And nobody's really sorry about
hat. There's an opportunity now for the programmers, the creators, the
ountainhead to reestablish where the initiation of this stuff comes from.
here it begins.
STEVE WOZNIAK : You get a lot of problems when you get engineers who are
nterested just in the technical solution, the right solution. It's got an
ncredible value to them because it was an incredible discovery, it took a
ot of work to find it, and they pay no attention to marketing
onsiderations. Somebody has to use this thing eventually. It has to make
ense as a product. Sometimes engineers are in control and cause the most
isastrous consequences for the companies in this business, because they did
ot act as one person with marketing.
STEWART BRAND : One of the problems with all that brilliant research at Xerox
ARC -- which was wasted at Xerox and later at Apple turned into the
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   acintosh -- is that they never got to cycle their stuff through product.
hey never got to really deal with customers the way Wallace does or
luegelman does, where they have a direct pipe between themselves and the
eople who are using their stuff. And since the Shareware guys are not
ighting their own inventory (because they don't have to have any), they can
espond with new improvements, new versions all the time. What they're doing
trikes me as the best solution so far to these paradoxes. One of the things
'd like to see shared here is the economics of how to be in business for
ourself or in cahoots with other designers, and have the marketing guys
orking for you.
STEVE WOZNIAK : Frequently you have the engineering here and marketing there,
artitioned. It's much better when the engineers have a lot of marking
ontent and marketing people have a lot of engineering content. It's much
ore motivating and more productive.
TERRY NIKSCH (Homebrew hacker) : Yeah, but I think you're almost getting into
 definition there. I think a hacker works to please himself first and to
mpress his peers, but as soon as you go for institutional approval, which
ncludes the institution of the marketplace, I don't think you're hacking
nymore.
BOB WALLACE : No, no, no. Shareware is a marketing hack. (laughter, applause)
STEVE WOZNIAK : Somebody who's designing something for himself has at least
ot a market of one that he's very close to.
ANDREW FLUEGELMAN (author and distributor of PC-TALK, and excellent
elecommunications program for IBM PCs and compatibles; founding editor of PC
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   ORLD and Macworld) : That's what got me started. I originally wrote PC_TALK
s a pure hack. I won't confess what language I wrote it in, but the fact is
hat I had owned my computer for about a month and I was trying to send my
iles to someone using a completely different computer, and there was not one
iece of software in the entire world that would let me do that. I stayed up
or a lot of nights to figure out a way to do it, and I consider that to be
ery much within the hacker ethic or spirit.
What got me away from being a hacker was when I figured out, "How can I get
his out to people?" Although I'm known for giving away software for free, I
id it purely to figure out how I could make some money with what I had done.
he reason it's been successful is very strange. On the one hand, what people
uy is not really access to the program, or the information. What they're
ainly buying is the support, the stability, and the fact that it works
eliably. And the reason for that is because I've had the opportunity to get
 lot of feedback from a lot of people who were pissed off when they got
ersion 1.6 of the program, found that it didn't work with their modem, and
hey called me and said, "Hey, I've got this strange situation and here's
hat you can do to fix it."
I call that "freeback," and that's really what made the program successful.
ight now my highest cost is user support. More than half of all the money I
pend is to have people on the phone telling, not programmer types, but just
egular people, how to use the program. In that respect my business looks
imilar to very commercial ventures. The difference is that it's been made
ccessible to people in a very unconditional way, and that's what people have
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   esponded to.
DAVID LUBAR (games designer for Activision) : You don't have to say that you
ither give it away or sell it. For example, a while back, just for the fun
f it, I tried to see if I could compress Apple pictures and I came up with
ome code that required less disk space, so I published the listing in a
agazine and as a result other people looked at it and said, "Hey, here's a
etter way," and it evolved through a whole bunch of people coming up with
ore and more compression. At the same time I gave the code itself to a
ublisher who put it out as part of a package and I get nice royalties from
t. So it's not one world or the other.
DOUG CARLSTON : I think that there's a certain level of naivete here about
he commercial world as a whole. All you have to do is take a look at the
apanese Ministry of Industry and Trade, MITI. Japan certainly has gotta be
ne of the most commercial nations on Earth. With software they essentially
ant to  require anybody who owned any proprietary product to license it to
nybody who felt that they had a need for it, and if they refused such a
icense, it would then be stripped of its copyright protection. That's
ecause Japan feels that it has a strong competitive advantage in the
anufacture and sale of hardware, but they feel like they're years behind in
he development of software, and frankly what they really wanted to do was
trip the advantage that other nations had in the development of software
rom them so that they could take it if they wanted to use it.
The dissemination of information as a free object is a worthy goal, it's the
ay most of us learned in the first place. But the truth of the matter is,
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   hat people are going has more and more commercial value and if there's any
ay for people to make money of it, somebody's gonna try to get an angle on
t. So I think that it ought to be up to the people who design the product
hether or not they want to give it away or sell it. It's their product and
t should be a personal decision.
BILL ATKINSON (author of MACPAINT, the landmark graphics program on the
acintosh) : Sometimes it's not even money. When I was working on QUICKDRAW I
ame across some improvements, real good algorithms, that I'd never seen
efore that I would love to tell lots of people about, because I think
hey're really neat hacks. and yet, I want to see Apple around in twenty
ears. It's not money for me; they're not paying me money to not talk about
UICKDRAW. I just know there's something there that gives Mac and advantage
ver and IBM PC and I don't really want to see IBM rip off QUICKDRAW. I
on't. (applause)
ANDREW FLUEGELMAN : The problem is just distribution. There's been no thing
n Earth so easy to distribute to people as software. The reason that we go
ut and pay five to ten or twenty thousand dollars for a car is because you
eed a key to drive it and it's usually sitting behind a fence at the
ealer's showroom. The fact is that no matter how hard we work on something,
ow much inspiration or insight we put into it, once it's completed, in the
edium which we work, it's a trivial matter to make a perfect copy and give
t to anybody in the world, instantly. That's what's been challenging us. It
as nothing to do with whether it's easier or harder to make cars or write
rograms.
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   TED KAEHLER (programmer at Xerox PARC -- Palo Alto Research Center) : Do you
hink it's reasonable, through the scheme you're using to support Freeware,
hat everyone in this room could be making a living that way?
ANDREW FLUEGELMAN : I really don't know. I did it just as a giggle. The
eason I started was because I'd finished this program, I was gonna send it
ut, and I knew that I didn't have a prayer of coming up with a
opy-protection scheme that some kid in San Diego wasn't gonna break the
irst night, so I figured I've gotta work with the system somehow.
TED KAEHLER : You must know something about whether or not this many people
ould be doing that.
ANDREW FLUEGELMAN : I think maybe, if a lot of people were willing to put out
hat I would call fully supported programs. That means not just something
hat gets the job done for you, which is what I did in the first round, but
ne that is error-trapped, that is documented, that is supported, that looks
ike it's been given all those trappings of value. Then maybe you can appeal
o people's sense of value. It's worked for me, I know it's worked for Bob
nd for a few others.
DOUG GARR (journalist from Omni) : Could you tell us how the economics of
reeware works?
ANDREW FLUEGELMAN : I send out the program and I ask for a $35 contribution,
hich for a program of its type many people say is one-fifth the cost of what
hey'd expect to spend commercially. So it's a bargain to begin with. I
ncourage people to make copies. I try and discourage people from re-selling
he program and large corporations from making thousands of copies. I tell
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   eople that whether they liked it or not, give it to a friend and if their
riend likes it then maybe they'll send me some money. I would guess that
bout one-tenth of the people who are using the program now have paid for it,
nd there are a lot of commercial software companies that can't make that
laim. (laughter)
STEVEN LEVY : There's someone here who's supporting a program that doesn't
sk for money. Dennis Brothers, do you want to tell us about MACTEP and what
ou've done there?
DENNIS BROTHERS : It's kind of a strange situation. I wrote it for my own
se. I needed a communications program for the Macintosh, so I wrote it, and
t turned out to be something that a lot of other people wanted as well. It's
ery primitive, very crude, compared to PC-TALK, but it was the right place
nd the right time, and there was tremendous response for it. I'm kicking
yself a little now; maybe I should have put a little message in there:
Please send 35 bucks." (laughter)
ANDREW FLUEGELMAN : I just want to know: How many people in this room are
sing Dennis's program and would send him money for it? I would.
VOICE : Why don't you ask it as two questions? (laughter)
ANDREW FLUEGELMAN : No, it's a compound question.
DENNIS BROTHERS : It is not a high enough quality program, in my estimation,
o warrant that. And I don't have to time to put into it to bring it up to
he level of PC-TALK where I believe it would be worth that kind of
ontribution.
ART KLEINER (telecommunications editor for Whole Earth Software Catalog and
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   hole Earth Review) : You had time to hang out on Compuserve [network] and
nswer people's questions, though.
DENNIS BROTHERS : Yeah, but that's more for the fun of it. I don't have any
etter luck explaining this to my wife than explaining it to you guys.
laughter) Someday I may make most of my income off that program and its
erivatives and related things, but today my primary business is completely
nrelated to that, and I just don't have the time. I give what support I can,
or much the same reason that I'm at this conference, for the interaction
ith other hackers over the network. I don't know, I'm having a little
rouble in my own mind figuring out just why I did it the way I did it
RICHARD STALLMAN : What would you think if someone else wanted to work on
mproving it, say, and then distributing it as freeware and split the results
ith you?
DENNIS BROTHERS : It has happened and they are not splitting (laughter) and I
on't know how to handle that.
BRIAN HARVEY: I'd like to argue against the idea of intellectual property in
oftware. And here's why. I have a version of LOGO for UNIX that I worked on,
hat I wrote. So it's my intellectual property, right? I started with
omething that somebody else did and improved it. I improved it a lot; it's
bout 9O percent me. But I started with somebody else's structure. Now,
efore that he started with some terrific intellectual work done by Seymour
apert and Wally Fertzog and the gang at BBN [Bolt, Beranek & Newman, a
ambridge research institute] and MIT. I also started from the work done by
en Thompson and Dennis Ritchey and Brian Kernighan to give me the
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   rogramming tools that I needed to write that thing. I also started with a
hole basis of material support from the guys who built the hardware and
esigned the hardware. Okay? That's not to say that I didn't do anything.
VOICE : Don't forget your mother and father. (laughter)
BRIAN HARVEY : Damn straight. And the people who were paying my salary while
 was doing it -- they weren't paying me exactly to do that (laughter), but
ang on, the truth is I was a teacher in a high school and I needed this
rogram to teach my kids. They weren't paying me to be a programmer, but I
id it because it was something I needed to support my work. The point is
hat I did was based on the work of a hell of a lot of other people, all
ight? I think that's true of anything that anybody does. If I say fuck the
orld this is my thing and I'm in it for what I can get, then I'm a son of a
itch.
STEVE WOZNIAK : Philosophically you go higher and higher and higher and the
hole world is the best thing. If the world gains, that's better than if your
ittle country gains, or your little company gains. But then we don't want
he others to get it, because "If IBM gets it it's gonna be a bad outcome for
he People." It turns out that that's either bullshit or something else, but
t's bullshit. It turns out if IBM got it the rest of the world would really
ave more and do more. We really just want to make as much money as we can
ff of what we put our time in. Now you take that one level further and ... I
orget what I was gonna say. (laughter, applause)
JERRY JEWELL (founder of Sirius Software, publisher of computer games) : I
hink in most cases the programmers here who are wanting to make money at
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   his are a lot like witchdoctors. As long as they can keep a secret how they
o things, it appears to be magic to John Q. Public, and they're gonna make
iving, but as soon as everybody has a computer and knows how to program and
e have languages that don't require any special knowledge, your income's
onna go away.
DAVID LUBAR : But there are more people willing to buy games and play them
han are willing to write them.
JERRY JEWELL : Right. Because they don't know how to write them.
STEVE WOZNIAK : I remember what I was gonna say. The company wants to keep it
ecret to make as much money as they can, but here's how we get beyond that
evel. We say that the whole world wins because other people are more
nspired to go write their own programs and design their own hardware because
hey're gonna make money. They're gonna make so much product and do so well
ff it that they'll go out and do the most incredible things. They're
nspired. That's the American way.
RICHARD GREENBLATT : There is a force in this world for standardization. It
here's a knowledgeable marketplace people will say, "Gee, we want to do
hings a standard way." That's what IBM really did right. They said, "We're
onna have an open architecture on the PCs," and they advertised that and it
as the one thing they did right, and look where it got 'em. In software that
ame thing can happen. If you have something done right and it's standardized
nd it's public, people will want that as opposed to the proprietary thing.
nd itas not necessarily because it's better today than the proprietary
hing, but they realize that it is building a foundation and over the long
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   erm maybe it will get to be better than the proprietary thing.
STEVE WOZNIAK : Customers set the standards.
RICHARD GREENBLATT : Customers inevitably will set the standards, no matter
hat.
DAVE HUGHES ("Sourcevoid Dave," system operator of pace-setting bulletin
oard system -- 3O3/632-3391) : Hackers are doomed, and you just better
ccept that. (Hsssss) Not doomed to extinction, you're doomed to live a life
n which you're on the frontier. Nobody pays for my WORD-DANCE, nobody paid
or your early stuff, nobody paid for T.S. Eliot's first goddamn poems. When
e got commercial, then the ethic meant when he made it he damn well better
ycle back, and al least Apple and a few companies try to give it back, and
he Shareware and Freeware is an attempt to try to reconcile that boundary
oward an ethic and a commitment.
HENRY LIEBERMAN (MIT A.I. Lab) : How does the frontier get supported? How do
he centers of research and the centers of education get supported? I think
here is another kind of software piracy going on that's not discussed very
uch, and the villains are not high school kids who copy discs and break
ecret codes. They're executives in three-piece suits that work for large
orporations and drive Mercedes. They make money off the results of research
nd education, and they don't kick very much back to support the next
eneration.
VOICE : They will argue that they paid the taxes that funded the MIT A.I. Lab
HENRY LIEBERMAN : That's true, and that is only reason that place like MIT
nd Stanford don't disappear entirely off the face of the Earth. We have this
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   aradoxical situation where the computer industry is booming and yet places
ike MIT and Stanforl do['t Aave secure support. It's very likely that I will
e out of a job in a year. Place like the MIT A.I. Lab get no direct benefit
rom places like IBM or Apple. Well, that's not true, that's not true. They
ive us discounts on their machines, and that's very helpful.
And they contribute some cash, but the amount they contribute is piddling in
he sense that when it comes time to pay my salary, the people I work for
ave to go begging to people like ARPA and they have to promise to build
ombs (murmuring) [ARPA is Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the
efense Department] and that disturbs me deeply. I and my colleagues come up
ith important ideas which people acknowledge helps support the industry and
akes money for people. I would like to be able to pursue my work without
aving to go to the Defense Department.
RICHARD STALLMAN : It's worse that  even, because at a university paid for by
veryone in the country an idea will be developed almost to the point where
ou can use it, but then the last bit of work will be done by some company
nd the company will get lots of money, and those of us who already paid for
ost of the work won't be able to get the sources even though we paid for
hose sources to be written.
LES ERNEST (founder of Imagen Systems, former head of Stanford A.I. Lab) :
arious ideas have been given about what is the essence of hacking. Is it
ltruism or is it financial motive? My view is that it's primarily an ego
rip, by most people. All good hacks are done by somebody who thinks he can
o it a lot better than anybody else, and he goes off and does it. There are
ery few team hacks that one can think of that went anywhere. (murmuring) Of
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   ourse commercial development is intrinsically a team effort, and therefore
here is always some tugging going on when you change over from being a
acker to trying to do some commercial development. It was mentioned a little
hile ago that Japan, while they have good hardware, don't seem to have good
oftware for the most part. My view is, that's a cultural problem; Japanese
ulture values team effort very much; it does not value ego trips.
BILL BURNES: I think Les is right, and I also agree with what Woz said, and I
ould like to propose that we separate two things. I think the "hacker drive"
s individual, it's a drive within us. It's what happens when we're doing
omething absolutely useless; we just decide to tickle a line of code and see
here it went at some weird 3 A.M. on a Saturday morning. But then what
appens to the product of that is a whole 'nother set of questions. I think
f we can separate the hacker drive from the products of hacking, which can
ither have no economic value or tremendous economic value but still have the
ame hacker value, then I think the discussion will get a little father.
LEE FELSENSTEIN (designer of Osborne I, co-founder of Community Memory) : If
ou're only dealing with one of those two things in your life, if you define
ourself in only one area, you are crippled, I say. I've seen a lot of
ripples on the other side, too. If you're only taking stuff that other
eople make, and playing games with it somehow get money out of it -- I
elieve that people like that (of course, I'm not one of them) (laughter) ...
eople like that know that they're the ones that are playing the win/lose
ame. "If I give it to you I must take it from him." And that results in what
 and other call the "production of scarcity."
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   We have a responsibility to know about and live to a certain extent on the
ther side of the fence and find out what happens with these things once
hey're produced. And we should also expect the people who live most of their
ives over there to come onto our side and learn to play a little bit, learn
o express some of their own creativity. Concentrating on one thing alone
akes you into a deformed person.
DICK HEISER (owner and proprietor of the original Computer Store in 1975, now
ith Xanadu) : It seems like you can have a variable amount of your own
ontent in something. As a computer retailer I found myself turning over
ther people's goods. I wanted to distinguish the quality of my service, but
 found that hard. Don Lancaster, who wrote the book called 'The Incredible
ecret Money Machine' (applause), talked about the fact that if your are
aximizing the added value, rather than trying to leverage other people's
oney or other people's work, then a miracle can go on.
You have to be committed, and you don't know how it's gonna work out, but the
mount of power factor that's going on in this technology is so astounding
hat you ought to be encouraged to try. In this miraculous environment, we
ind people like Bob Wallace doing things that succeed very much beyond the
xpectations that he probably had. Similarly my store started out as kind of
 hacker-type thing that became much too commercial. You keep deciding, "Is
hat what I want?"
You keep designing, you keep adding personal value, and the miracle keeps
appening. It doesn't happen for everybody, unfortunately, and it doesn't
appen automatically, but if you're willing to experiment, and if you beware
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   f too much money and too many other people getting involved, so that you can
ake your own decisions, then you're free to try these wonderful things and
ee if they work. And sometimes they do.

ONFERENCE BACKGROUND -  ----------------------------------->
  Organizing the Hacker's Conference was like some of the early hacking at
IT, so collaborative and rapid you couldn't keep track of who did what. It
ractically fell together around the strength of character and curiosity of
he participant.
 Kevin Kelly imagined such a conference after reading Hackers, I instigated
he thing, and Patty Phelan was loaned half-time by John Brochman Associates
o organize it in two months. Designing to conference itself were four
ackers: Lee Felsenstein, famed as the master of ceremonies of the Homebrew
omputer Club at its height, designer of the Osborne I and of Community
emory; Bill Budge, author of PINBALL CONSTRUCTION SET; Andy Hertzfeld,
rominent on the Macintosh Development Team, co-designer of the
hunderscanner; and Doug Carlston, found and president of Broderbund
oftware, Inc. Steven Levy, along with Whole Earth's Art Kleiner, Matthew
cClure, and Kevin Kelly, played essential roles in continuity and
ollow-through. Office Manager Lyn Gray handled relations with the site,
osemite Institute at Fort Cronkhite, where she used to work.
 It was set up as an invitational conference, no featured speakers, minimal
udget; all participant paid the same $9O for food and lodging and conference
o matter how much or little they used. With $5,OOO donated by Doubleday
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   publishers of Hackers and The Whole Earth Software Catalog) the event broke
moothly even at a modest total of $16,5OO.
 Knowing we had facilities for 15O, over 4OO hackers were invited in three
aves. That became a saga of its own -- identifying the right 4OO, getting
urrent addresses and phones of a slippery crowd, getting them to respond
many are beleaguered; many ignore mail and phone). But once they were one
he scene, they were the world's easiest group to work with. If anything went
rong, 1) they didn't care. 2) they could fix it. Staff, volunteers,
articipants, and press [20 knowledgeable computer reporters were invited]
lended into on energetic population. As PC Week headlined the following
eek, "HACKERS FIND WONDER, EACH OTHER AT CONFERENCE."
 Thanks to a $5,OOO donation by Steve Wozniak, the entire amazing weekend
as videotaped -- making this article possible, as well as a segment on PBS's
igh Tech Times. Videoist Fabrice Florin (624 Cabrillo, San Francisco, CA
4119; 415/751-8888) is seeking modest financial assistance to edit together
 half-hour broadcast version of the historic occasion.
                                            -SB

TEVEN LEVY's BOOK -  -------------------------------------->
  The founding text for the Hackers' Conference was Steven Levy's 'Hackers -
eros of the Computer Revolution' (1984; 458 pp.; $17.95 from Doubleday and
ompany, 5O1 Franklin Ave., Garden City, NY 1153O, or Computer Literacy).
 Levy does for computers what Tom Wolfe did for space with The Right Stuff.
oth are behind-the-scenes tales of elite athletes pursuing potent new
                    Come on...  Ain't Got All Day!!                                                   echnologies; both are vividly written; both are inspiring.
 The very structure of the book was the occasion for the Conference. Levy
hronicles three generations of hackers -- the mini-computer all-night coders
t MIT and Stanford in the '6Os, the hardware hackers around the Homebrew
omputer Club who made the first personal computers in the mid-7Os, and the
yriad home-grown programmers on those computers as soon as they hit the
arket, who gave us the galaxy of consumer software from VISICALC to
HOPLIFTER. In the succession of generations Levy portrays a gradual
egrading, commercializing of the Hacker Ethic.
 The Hackers' Conference was called to join the three generations for the
irst time to see if they had anything to say to each other, and to see where
he Hacker Ethic really was after years of stress in the boom-and-bust
omputer business. "Each generation," remarked conference co-designer Lee
elsenstein, "has suffered an infusion of Big Money. It may be interesting
or them to compare how they've dealt with that."
                                            -SB
END DOKS......

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