LychnisA scratchpad for thoughts on my journey through life

You may have noticed I added the “Hacker logo”
to the bottom right of this page somewhere last week. Of course I first read about it when it appeared on slashdot. The reactions there were mostly negative, with arguments such as:

• Hackers don’t need a logo;
• It will be abused by crackers and other dubious figures;
• The media will use it for anything related with computers, and bedazzle its meaning;
• Why does Eric Raymond want his statue carved in the face of the moon;
• Why did he have to chose a glider that moves down?

Personally, I like the idea of having a logo. Like it says in the FAQ, having the logo on your website doesn’t make you a hacker; that is a title you have to earn. Instead I want to show my sympathies to the hacker culture, show anyone that I share visions.

I agree somewhat with the sentiments that “a gun crazed wack job that would scare most moms out of the day care center“. Like Richard Stallman once said at an edition of FOSDEM, It doesn’t help your case for free software if you mingle your views with political statements. People will close their minds for your arguments for free software if you also make statements that they disagree with, even if they are in a different field.

But even so, Eric has done a lot of good work for the open source/free software world in general. I have never met him in person, I wouldn’t know if he deserves any of the criticism he gets. In any case, it would be unfair to refuse to use the hacker logo solely because you disagree with Eric.

The idea to take a glider for the logo is brilliant, of course. It’s simple, and could be represented in ASCII very well. I don’t care much that Eric chose the one that goes down, any variant would do. Plus I think this one looks good I’ve just become interested in finite state machines and cellular automata.

I don’t fear much for usage of the logo by people who aren’t hackers in the original meaning; “we’ll find some way to shame and reject you publicly if you mess with ours.”

And the media, well… that’s just a matter of consequently using the image as a link to Eric’s explanation page. People will pick up its real meaning, and if they don’t they should be politely corrected. I hope the real hackers among us are civilized enough to keep their anger down if anyone uses it in the wrong way.

Tags: , culture, hacker //