Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking

statements by which hackers declare and demarcate their unique contribution to a collective endeavor. They also represent culturally sanctioned mechanisms for judgment.
    Fogel’s code is an apt example of “face work” (Goffman 1967, 5)—when a hacker is sanctioned to perform a “line,” which is the “pattern of verbal and nonverbal acts by which he expresses his view of the situation and through this his evaluation of the participants, especially himself.” Within such a presentation, hackers can declare and demarcate their unique contribution to a piece of software while at the same time proffering technical judgment. One may even say that this taunting is their informal version of the academic peer-review process. In this particular case, Fogel is declaring the code he patched as an utter failure of the imagination.
    Because these insults are critical evaluations of work, if hackers dare to make such pronouncements, they also have to make them technically clever enough to be accepted as accurate critiques. After a declaration is made, a hacker should be ready to enter the arena of competitive jousting. If one hacker judges some piece of code, it is almost guaranteed that another hacker may reply with chutzpah of their own, often in humorous guise.
    The second example demonstrates this type of competitive play of technical volleyball, a form of “antiphony” of “call and response” common to jazz poetics (Gilroy 1993, 78). While jazz poetics may seem strange to applyto hacking, I will expand on this connection later when addressing hacker notions of creativity. First, let’s take a closer look at this portion of the code that shows the use of boasting to induce a response (I have highlighted the relevant section in italics):
    /* Prime number generation
    Copyright (C) 1994 Free Software Foundation
    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
    modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
    published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. */
    #include
    #include
    /* Return the next prime greater than or equal to N. */
    int
    nextprime (int n)
    {
    static int *q;
    static int k = 2;
    static int l = 2;
    int p;
    int *m;
    int i, j;
    /* You are not expected to understand this. */
    if (!q)
    {
    /* Init */
    q = malloc (sizeof (int) * 2);
    q[0] = 2;
    q[1] = 3;
    }
    Derived from the FSF’s Hurd development project, which is its kernel project, the code is a prime number generator. Programmers have told me that the technical details are fairly intricate, so I refrain here from providing an explanation of the actual mechanics of the code, and for the sake of analysis it is not necessary. The important element is the author’s comment: “/* You are not expected to understand this. */.” It reveals how boasting is an open invitation to engage in technical jousting—a playful taunt that explicitly encourages the technical comeback that proves the expectation wrong.
    The author’s intentions are pretty clear in the code, but here is his retroactive explanation: “At this point I offered the function as a challenge to Jim Blandy. [ … ] That the function was intended to produce prime numbers was never hidden; the challenge was to explain its technique.” Blandy took the call to technical arms and responded with his own exegesis of the algorithm. When the original author of the prime number function updated the code, he changed the taunt to “/* See the comment at the end for an explanation of the algorithm used. */,” and at the end of the code, stated, “Jim produced the following brilliant explanation” and included it within the code (and again, I have indicated the relevant section in italics).
    /* Prime number generation
    C [ … ]
    #include
    #include
    /* Return the next prime greater than or equal to N. */ [ … ]
    /* See the comment at the end for an explanation of the algorithm
    used. */
    if (!q)
    {
    /* Init */ [ … ]
    * [This code originally contained the