Ethics and Principles
Many of the values and tenets of the free and open source software movement stem from the hacker ethics that originated at MIT and at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Hacker Ethics were chronicled by Steven Levy in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution and in other texts.
Hacker ethics are concerned primarily with sharing, openness, collaboration, and engaging in the Hands-On Imperative.
Linus Torvalds, one of the leaders of the Open Source movement (Known primarily for developing Linux's core), has noted in the book "The Hacker Ethic" that these principles have evolved from the known Protestant Ethics and incorporates the spirits of capitalism, as introduced in the early 20th century by Max Weber.
Read more about this topic: Hacker (programmer Subculture)
Famous quotes containing the words ethics and/or principles:
“If you take away ideology, you are left with a case by case ethics which in practise ends up as me first, me only, and in rampant greed.”
—Richard Nelson (b. 1950)
“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)