Editing Hacker ethic (section)

===Sharing===
From the early days of modern computing through to the 1970s, it was far more common for computer users to have the freedoms that are provided by an ethic of open sharing and collaboration. [[Software]], including source code, was commonly shared by individuals who used computers. Most companies had a business model based on hardware sales, and provided or bundled the associated software free of charge. According to Levy's account, sharing was the norm and expected within the non-corporate hacker culture. The principle of sharing stemmed from the open atmosphere and informal access to resources at MIT. During the early days of computers and programming, the hackers at MIT would develop a program and share it with other computer users.

If the hack was deemed particularly good, then the program might be posted on a board somewhere near one of the computers. Other programs that could be built upon it and improved it were saved to tapes and added to a drawer of programs, readily accessible to all the other hackers. At any time, a fellow hacker might reach into the drawer, pick out the program, and begin adding to it or "bumming" it to make it better. Bumming referred to the process of making the code more concise so that more can be done in fewer instructions, saving precious memory for further enhancements.

In the second generation of hackers, sharing was about sharing with the general public in addition to sharing with other hackers. A particular organization of hackers that was concerned with sharing computers with the general public was a group called [[Community Memory]]. This group of hackers and idealists put computers in public places for anyone to use. The first community computer was placed outside of Leopold's Records in [[Berkeley, California]].

Another sharing of resources occurred when Bob Albrecht provided considerable resources for a non-profit organization called the [[People's Computer Company]] (PCC). PCC opened a computer center where anyone could use the computers there for fifty cents per hour.

This second generation practice of sharing contributed to the battles of free and open software. In fact, when [[Bill Gates]]' version of [[BASIC]] for the Altair was shared among the hacker community, Gates claimed to have lost a considerable sum of money because few users paid for the software. As a result, Gates wrote an [[Open Letter to Hobbyists]].<ref>{{cite book | title = We-Think | author = Charles Leadbetter | publisher = Profile Books | year = 2008 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | publisher = Metro | date = 12 March 2008 | author = Fiona Macdonald | title = Get a fair share of creativity }}</ref> This letter was published by several computer magazines and newsletters, most notably that of the [[Homebrew Computer Club]] where much of the sharing occurred.

According to Brent K. Jesiek in ''"Democratizing Software: Open Source, the Hacker Ethic, and Beyond,''" technology is being associated with social views and goals. Jesiek refers to Gisle Hannemyr's views on open source vs. commercialized software. Hannemyr concludes that when a hacker constructs software, the software is flexible, tailorable, modular in nature and is open-ended. A hacker's software contrasts mainstream hardware which favors control, a sense of being whole, and be immutable (Hannemyr, 1999).

Furthermore, he concludes that 'the difference between the hacker’s approach and those of the industrial programmer is one of outlook: between an agoric, integrated and holistic attitude towards the creation of artifacts and a proprietary, fragmented and reductionist one' (Hannemyr, 1999). As Hannemyr’s analysis reveals, the characteristics of a given piece of software frequently reflect the attitude and outlook of the programmers and organizations from which it emerges."