Perhaps a more positive way to approach this is to popularise a different term for what we mean by hacker (tinkerer, maker). It's not admitting defeat by abandoning the original meaning - it's taking the path of least resistance and evolving with the language.
The problem is that people think of A when they read B, because to them, they don't understand, or care, enough about the history of word to properly use it.
Sometimes you need to accept your losses and move on.
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1963 The Tech (MIT student newspaper) 20 Nov. 1 Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Prof. Carlton Tucker, administrator of the Institute phone system. … The hackers have accomplished such things as tying up all the tie-lines between Harvard and MIT, or making long-distance calls by charging them to a local radar installation. One method involved connecting the PDP-1 computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone, indicating an outside line, was found. … Because of the “hacking,” the majority of the MIT phones are “trapped.”
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(I wrote an article on this many years ago http://imranontech.com/2008/04/01/the-origin-of-hacker/)
The word is the clue as it implies 'invasive force'. Any other meaning is only going to be accepted when enough of you agree 'it is so'. The original meaning (and I've always known it as such, 30+ years) is perfectly outlined by the paragraph above. It does not refer to white-hat stuff.
The original word is 'hack':
cut with rough or heavy blows. hack off the dead branches
a rough cut, blow, or stroke. he was sure one of us was going to take a hack at him" (in sports) a kick or hit inflicted on another player. a cut or gash. a tool for rough striking or cutting, e.g., a mattock or a miner's pick.
I'm going to catch shit for this. Can't we all just get along? :)
EDIT: Fine down-vote me you evil b'stards - b'stard is a person without married parents :)
Hack does refer to cutting with rough or heavy blows. Centuries ago, "hackers" referred to people who made rough-shod furniture with an axe. That was a hack back then.
In WW2, "hackers" were mechanics in the US Navy who hacked off the broken parts of airplanes to weld together the working parts of broken planes. That was also a hack. The planes were referred to as "hack jobs."
History is littered with examples using exactly the meaning you cited that are quite the opposite of nefarious. The very essence of Maker culture is about the old definition of "hacker."
(But I agree that "hacker" has meant invading systems as long as it has meant anything else)
Despite what people claim, it wasn't true then and it isn't true now. For example the movie "War Games"(1983)[1] uses the term Hacker to refer to someone who hacked into computer systems.
A word can have multiple connotations without causing problems.
Hacker - A person who circumvents a walled network.
Cracker - A person who circumvents a walled software.
Even now I don't hear many people in the local tech community (Scotland) refer to hackers as we mean here (unless it's prefixed with something, for example "Python hacker").
This community is using the wrong term not the media.
That ship sailed approximately with the first documented use of the word "hacker": http://imranontech.com/2008/04/01/the-origin-of-hacker/
This petition is bad and its creator should feel bad.
'Cracker' also has racial connotations in the US, doesn't it? Language is complicated.
Either resign to the fact, or simply come up with a better term to describe what a hacker is.
In fact, what is a hacker anyway, just a talented coder? What about hardware hackers? A maker? Someone technical, but concerned with beauty? What about jailbreakers, are they crackers?
Hacker is a word that always had several interpretations. And, in fact, the network intruder one is of the oldest.
In fact, cracking, in software, is a very specific thing: bypassing copyrights/copy protections/limitations.
If you don't like what Hacker has meant and still means, don't apply it to yourself.
Starting my car with a key is not hacking, starting my neighbors car with his key is neither. Obtaining the key without consent, might be. But that again could in fact be social engineering.
In comparison, using another (master)key that happens to fit would be akin to "cracking". If one engineered the key himself, thàt (along with the required investigative research work) might be hacking.
Making wordpress themes isn't hacking, no matter how hard you want to ride the web 2.0 train.
It's hard to change the meaning of a word, but in this one case a reclamation is well underway.
I don't think a community (not HN, just in general) can just coin a term and expect to change the definition for all.
This has been going on for tens of years. Hackers feel like the media has wrongly appropriated the word, but nothing has changed in the meantime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28programmer_subculture...
All I'm saying is that surely it's not only the media that need to change, but also all definitions in general?
And no, you are incorrect.
Thanks for shining some clarity on this for me. I was merely asking a question followed by a thought, I didn't claim to be correct. I was simply asking.
Sometimes I say "painter" and I mean a guy who paints walls, and sometimes I mean a guy who paints pictures.
This whole attempt to make "cracker" happen feels like a bunch of people desperate to call themselves "Hackers" and feel cool, but without scaring off boring BigCorp employers.
