Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking

other activities including usual basics like food, sleep, and personal hygiene; and a chronic case of advanced bleary-eye. Can last from 6 months to 2 years, the apparent median being around 18 months. A few so afflicted never resume a more “normal” life, but the ordeal seems to be necessary to produce really wizardly (as opposed to merely competent) programmers. See also wannabee. A less protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when one is learning a new OS or programming language. 13
    Through this quest, many hackers who had never laid their eyes or hands on a Unix system came out the other side, transformed as excited disciples of an existing technical religion that goes back to the early 1970s: that of the Unix “command line.” If hackers conceive of computers as the general-purpose machine that allows them the unfettered ability to create infinite numbers of minimachines (pieces of software), then Unix is the modus operandi of choice. For example, a hacker named Mark explained that Linux is “where I started liking the [Unix] paradigm, the whole way of doing things.” For many it unlocked the hood of their previously locked OS. Many hackers had used Microsoft Windows 3.1 and had often programmed in it. As further elaborated by one Unix devotee during an interview:
    But that only offered you so much. [ … ] You had to operate within the constraints that the Windows environment allowed, but when you ran Linux you got all the tools and all the pieces, and the hood opened wide. The constraints were no longer arbitrary; they were limited by your technical abilities, knowledge, desire to push deeper.
    Unix as “Our Gilgamesh Epic”
    For those uninitiated in the religion of the command line, it is helpful to compare Linux/Unix to the most commonly used desktop OS, Microsoft Windows (which many F/OSS hackers love to loathe). This will provide a better sense of why Unix is adored as a tinkerer’s paradise, and why it holds a kindred aesthetic spirit to F/OSS’s philosophy of freedom and sharing. For those who take the time to learn its intricacies, Unix offers a more interactive relationship between user and OS than Microsoft Windows does. Unix is architecturally transparent; every part of the system is a “file” that can be seen, altered, and customized. It gives users the ability to “go behind the scenes” to individually configure the system for specific needs and operates along a similar logic to that of open source. Customization may mean something as seemingly insignificant as setting your own keyboard shortcuts (which in fact is crucial if you are typing most of the day, seven days a week) or rewriting any configuration file to optimize your hardware.
    In addition, Unix is equipped with a developer environment of tools and applications called into being not by clicking an icon but instead by a command written as text. These commands can be used to perform programming or administrative tasks, which can in turn be strung together in innovative ways to create new functionalities. Just as programmers might admire elegant code, programmers and system administrators also admire as well as share clever Unix uses and configurations. Given that it is considered a flexible partner, Unix is loved by hackers: “You can make it work exactly as you want [it to]. [ … ] There is always some kind of program that does that little thing different from the one that makes it easier or better for your own personal plan.” Like coding, a Unix environment works well as one in which hackers can fashion and cultivate their technical self.
    If hackers value Linux/Unix for its ability to be customized, its architecture is nonetheless held in place as a stable object by a coherent logic of aesthetic features, technical philosophy, cultural lore, a complicated legal history, and a peculiar brand of humor, embodied in its very name. Indeed, like so many hacker naming conventions, the name Unix is a clever historical referent—in this case, indexing its conditions of birth. Unix derives from another related OS, the much larger Multics, originally developed in AT&T’s Bell Labs. In 1969 Bell Labs canceled funding for Multics; its authors, Ken Thomson and Denis Ritchie, salvaged (and many would sayimproved) Multics by parsing it down to a much smaller system, which they renamed Unix. Once Unix was “cut down,” its creators renamed Multics to “eunuchs” to capture the