Hacker Ethic - Levy's "true Hackers"

Levy's "true Hackers"

Levy identifies several "true hackers" who significantly influenced the hacker ethic. Some well-known "true hackers" include:

• John McCarthy: Co-founder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab and Stanford AI Laboratory
• Bill Gosper: Mathematician and hacker
• Richard Greenblatt: Programmer and early designer of LISP machines
• Richard Stallman: Programmer and political activist who is well known for GNU, Emacs and the Free Software Movement

Levy also identified the "hardware hackers" (the "second generation", mostly centered in Silicon Valley) and the "game hackers" (or the "third generation"). All three generations of hackers, according to Levy, embodied the principles of the hacker ethic. Some of Levy's "second-generation" hackers include:

• Steve Wozniak: One of the founders of Apple Computer
• Bob Marsh: A designer of the Sol-20 computer
• Fred Moore: Activist and founder of the Homebrew Computer Club
• Steve Dompier: Homebrew Computer Club member and hacker who worked with the early Altair 8800
• Lee Felsenstein: A hardware hacker and co-founder of Community Memory and Homebrew Computer Club; a designer of the Sol-20 computer
• John Draper: A legendary figure in the computer programming world. He wrote EasyWriter, the first word processor.

Levy's "third generation" practitioners of hacker ethic include:

• John Harris: One of the first programmers hired at On-Line Systems (which later became Sierra Entertainment)
• Ken Williams: Along with wife Roberta, founded On-Line Systems after working at IBM