{"id":4118,"date":"2012-02-02T14:09:40","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T19:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4118"},"modified":"2014-03-11T18:21:48","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T22:21:48","slug":"does-corporation-x-follow-the-hacker-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4118","title":{"rendered":"Does &#8220;Corporation X&#8221; follow the hacker way?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Got a query from a journalist today working on a major story about a certain large corporation that&#8217;s been much in the news lately. Seems the corporation&#8217;s founder has been talking up his organization&#8217;s allegiance to &#8220;the hacker way&#8221;, and she not unreasonably wanted my opinion as to whether or not this was complete horse-puckey.<\/p>\n<p>So as not to steal the lady&#8217;s thunder, I won&#8217;t reveal the identity of Corporation X. I will, however, repeat a version of my answer with its identity lightly obscured &#8211; because I think these are questions we should ask <em>any<\/em> corporation that talks like that.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I answered:<\/p>\n<p>I have never used Corporation X&#8217;s website myself. Therefore, rather than directly opining about what Corporation X espouses, I&#8217;ll suggest some criteria your readers can apply for themselves.<\/p>\n<p>As a user of Corporation X&#8217;s site, do I have control of the data Corporation X keeps about me? Concretely: can I examine and modify that data using tools of <em>my<\/em> choosing which are built for <em>my<\/em> needs?<\/p>\n<p>Does Corporation X act as though I own my on-line life, or as though it does? Concretely: Can I control what data it shares with other users, with advertisers, and with business partners?<\/p>\n<p>Does Corporation X behave like a tool in my hand, or a firehose designed to  spew at me in accordance with other peoples&#8217; agendas?  Concretely: can I write my own client to present a filtered view of the Corporation X data stream, or have other people do that for me?<\/p>\n<p>No prize for guessing that &#8220;the hacker way&#8221; is to give control to the individual, to respect his or her privacy, to create tools for autonomy and liberty, and to encourage creative re-use of software.<\/p>\n<p>And yes, one of the most basic questions is &#8220;Does Corporation X publish the source code of its user-facing software in a form that can easily be understood, modified, and reused?&#8221;  Because if the answer to that question is &#8220;no&#8221;, it is very unlikely that users will or ever <em>can<\/em> have the control of their on-line lives that they deserve.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE: Now that the <a href=\"http:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2012\/02\/06\/the-hacker-way-and-facebook\/\">article has been published<\/a>, I can confirm that &#8220;Corporation X&#8221; is indeed Facebook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Got a query from a journalist today working on a major story about a certain large corporation that&#8217;s been much in the news lately. Seems the corporation&#8217;s founder has been talking up his organization&#8217;s allegiance to &#8220;the hacker way&#8221;, and she not unreasonably wanted my opinion as to whether or not this was complete horse-puckey.&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4118\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Does &#8220;Corporation X&#8221; follow the hacker way?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hacker-culture","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4118"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5419,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4118\/revisions\/5419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}