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, ethics and/or principles:
“Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)
“That, upon the whole, we may conclude that the Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)