
The Google Question: Is The Hacker Ethic Compatible With A For Profit Company? - mindcrime
http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-google-question-is-hacker-ethic.html
======
mmaunder
OP uses RedHat as some kind of shining example. I did an Oracle server
installation for RedHat as a consultant a few years ago. They took 3 months to
pay me - literally paid me on the 90th day.

The wikipedia article the OP links to reckons the Hacker Ethic is "access,
freedom of information, and improvement to quality of life."

Interesting that "quality of life" is in there. Building a profitable company
is just about the finest thing you can do to uplift a community's quality of
life when you create sustainable jobs and those employees fuel other
sustainable businesses in the community.

I run a profitable company and it often crosses my mind how the dollar that
I'm spending at the mom and pop bakery has travelled around the world via
happy customers and employees into my local community.

There's something else: I read about another startup dying today. They just
ran out of cash. I really really hate to see great software and great ideas
just die because the creators couldn't figure out how to sustain them. Well
guess what, you sustain those ideas by turning them into a profitable
business. Profitable companies are a great way to keep your idea alive and
available for customers.

I make GPL'd software and I make money from it. 90% of my customers use my
software for free. Running a for profit company lets me continue to create
open source software and to create more of it. It also lets my customers use
my open source software for free.

~~~
mindcrime
_OP uses RedHat as some kind of shining example._

I don't know that I'd call them a "shining" example, and I definitely would
not say RH are perfect. They are, however, the best example I could think off
at first blush (and second blush, as far as that goes) of a successful for-
profit that seems to embody the hacker ethic.

 _There's something else: I read about another startup dying today. They just
ran out of cash. I really really hate to see great software and great ideas
just die because the creators couldn't figure out how to sustain them. Well
guess what, you sustain those ideas by turning them into a profitable
business. Profitable companies are a great way to keep your idea alive and
available for customers._

That's a great way of looking at it, and pretty close to my own view. That's
why I want Fogbeam Labs to one day be a large, profitable, influential
business... not just to make a lot of money, but so we'll have the resources
to do the things we want to do, and so we can do our part to support hackers
and open access to knowledge and technology.

~~~
mmaunder
Awesome followup comment - I love your positive outlook! Best of luck to you
and your team!!!!!

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DanielBMarkham
As another commenter pointed out, we're creating this huge straw man of what
the "hacker ethic" is. I'd want a lot more clarification in this essay before
I would be happy running off on a categorization party.

I was reading a commentary the other day that put it something like this: the
technology community will pay a lot of lip service to libertarian ideas, but
what they really want is the data. Assuming this is correct, then those
companies that make gestures towards EFF and others do so because in most
cases it provides more data to people. Google gives you email because it
provides them data. The data is more valuable than the cost of running the
service. Same goes for Facebook.

Tech companies want data -- and lots of it. They support various causes and
make various statements because it allows them more access to data.

The subject of definitions is critical, because I think sometimes what we
think we hear from these companies is what we want to hear, instead of what
they're actually saying. Then we get surprised when their actions don't pan
out the way we expected.

~~~
IgorPartola
No, Google wants ad clicks. Data is just a way to get there. There are other
ways and they are/will be surely exploring them. Facebook wants the same
thing. Apple wants to sell you hardware and some software. Microsoft wants to
sell you software. 37signals wants to rent you software. Tesla wants to sell
you cars. I want to garner your upvotes. This post is just a means to an end.

------
anon1385
That this question even needs to be asked shows how much of the libertarian
kool-aid people involved in Silicon Valley culture have been drinking. Of
course a for profit company is not compatible with ethics (of any flavour).
It's in the damn name: 'for _profit_ ' not 'for humanity'.

~~~
etherael
The more desperate the need the higher the potential to turn a profit, so in a
fashion, pursuing the maximum profit is fulfilling the needs of the market.

Giving people what they want.

Sure, there are sometimes negative externalities, giving people what they want
isn't always what they need. At least sometimes, people want stupid things.
But enormous world changing products and services which are profitable in line
with the extent that they change the world for the better are certainly not
necessarily a net negative for humanity, in fact I'd say it's closer to the
reverse..

~~~
coldtea
> _The more desperate the need the higher the potential to turn a profit, so
> in a fashion, pursuing the maximum profit is fulfilling the needs of the
> market.Giving people what they want._

That's the "invisible hand", "selfishness turns out to good" political economy
motto.

Which is unscientific BS.

If a company can lie, cheat, steal or sell people things that are bad for
them, including making them want stuff they did not care about through
misleading ads and manipulation marketing, they will do it.

~~~
etherael
Potentially, but if you're dismissing free markets on account of manipulative,
deceitful or otherwise fraudulent behaviour, you ought to at least hope that
fraudulent behaviour never occurs or occurs less frequently in the centrally
planned economy alternative. There seems to be a surfeit of evidence contrary
to this statement throughout the world at the moment, so you'll excuse me if I
take that idea with several solar masses of sodium chloride.

I still maintain the only alternative to giving people what they want is
forcing them to follow your plan. Historically people who take this path
frequently turned out to be wrong, and all the people who they dragged kicking
and screaming with them down the path end up bearing the brunt of the negative
externalities for their poor decisions.

At least if you give people the absolute freedom to make their own choices
when or if they end making bad ones they have only themselves to hold
responsible. This is what annoys me most about this whole central economic
planning groupthink people are prone to indulging in. The constant pretense
that it's some well known scientific fact that only ignorant hicks aren't
aware of on a level similar to evolution vs creationism with their ensuing,
tired middle-brow dismissals.

~~~
coldtea
> _Potentially, but if you're dismissing free markets on account of
> manipulative, deceitful or otherwise fraudulent behaviour, you ought to at
> least hope that fraudulent behaviour never occurs or occurs less frequently
> in the centrally planned economy alternative. There seems to be a surfeit of
> evidence contrary to this statement throughout the world at the moment, so
> you'll excuse me if I take that idea with several solar masses of sodium
> chloride._

And who said anything about a "centrally planned economy"? Certainly not me.

I dismiss "free market" on the premise that it doesn't exist and it never
existed (and furthermore: that it can never exist). As soon as you have a
government and regulations you don't have a free market. And even if you could
have a free market, as soon as some players in the free market can grow big
enough to change the market environment to their favor, it ceases to exist
again. There is nothing to rebalance it automatically: only power plays.

> _I still maintain the only alternative to giving people what they want is
> forcing them to follow your plan._

How about letting them decide and produce what they want, instead of "giving
it" to them?

~~~
astine
> I dismiss "free market" on the premise that it doesn't exist and it never
> existed (and furthermore: that it can never exist). As soon as you have a
> government and regulations you don't have a free market.

That's silly, freedom is a matter of degree. A market with some simple rules
governing violence and the enforcement of contracts is certainly more free
than a Soviet style planned economy. You can neither have a perfectly free
market nor a perfectly controlled market. Even North Korea has a black market.
Generally when talking about about the 'freedom' of a market, the measure
which matters is not the arbitrary number of regulations which exist but the
ability of players (both individuals and firms) to freely and knowingly enter
into contracts and transactions. Laws which prohibit coercion, theft, and
deception can aid in making the market more free in the ways that matter.

~~~
coldtea
> _That's silly, freedom is a matter of degree. A market with some simple
> rules governing violence and the enforcement of contracts is certainly more
> free than a Soviet style planned economy. You can neither have a perfectly
> free market nor a perfectly controlled market._

No -- but the ideology of the free market sidesteps the issues of huge
imbalances and influencing and maintains BS about invisible hands and "egoism
working for the better" long after they have been proven dead and burried.

Now, if that was only spread by some naive "free market" bloggers and the like
that would be ok. But the bullshiting includes most of the souped down
political economy that is fed to the masses and to policy makers by "financial
experts" and "economy advisors" (and even most university classes on economy).

~~~
firebrand39
Coldtea has a point. 'Too big to fail' banks, coercive patent litigation and
so on, indicates to me that 'free markets' are nothing but an ideological
cover up for coercive powers in the hand of private actors instead of the
state. That's no real freedom either. This is no middle class lefty thought
but an observation.

------
ari_elle
I think it's wrong to speak of a hacker ethic in such strict terms. I would
not say somebody is instantly not a hacker if he holds the believe that it is
alright to make a project openly available and sell a corporate version with
specific features for example. Where to cross the line is up to each person,
the extreme example being rms, who even refuses to use a computer where the
BIOS isn't free (which many hackers would say is exorbitant).

Also there are quite many companies and business models around free software /
open source software.

Additional examples (granted, some of them no big shots):

-) Canonical

-) Codeweavers

-) id Software (engines under GPL, older games -> source code available)

-) Mandriva / Novell

Also there are sometimes open source strategies for certain products
(OpenOffice as Open Source Variant of StarOffice for example).

And what about the hosting providers and Linux / BSD support companies, which
granted, aren't global players, but there is a vast amount of them.

Is FOSS compatible with Profit? Yes

<https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html>

Is FOSS evenly compatible with profit compared to proprietary products? No,
not with today's corporate and economical structures (and the strict
copyright)

What goes against "Hacker Ethic" and what not? Debatable

~~~
cookiecaper
FOSS, as it's defined by the FSF, is not really compatible with profit as it
practically destroys the monopolistic benefit of copyright. Most people do not
believe traditional uses of copyright are immoral, and therefore the strict
adherence to freedom 2 as required by the GPL is simply meaningless
deprivation of profit potential.

------
wslh
> Google certainly aren't as evil as 1990's era MS...

I don't agree. I think that Google is in the same level of evilness (or will
be very soon).

They just released tons of code because it is not where they are making money.
But they release their search engine code? The game rules are so obvious now
(not only for Google) that it is incredible that we try to think about them in
an ethical way. They do things, if they have a power position they shift they
change the rules to maintain that power. Do you know how many times a Google
Search API was deprecated? <http://blog.databigbang.com/google-search-no-api/>

Another argument that I reuse every time when people compare Microsoft to
Google is that you could always reverse engineered software on your machine
but on The Cloud you have lost those hacker rights. You can't reverse engineer
web APIs. You can build a search engine yourself but your pagerank algorithm
will not be the same. More food for thought
[http://blog.nektra.com/main/2012/06/01/reverse-
engineering-a...](http://blog.nektra.com/main/2012/06/01/reverse-engineering-
and-the-cloud/)

~~~
rbanffy
> But they release their search engine code?

There is nothing unethical in not opening your competitive advantages. Besides
that, you don't have a hundred thousand machines to run it on.

> You can build a search engine yourself but your pagerank algorithm will not
> be the same

You can base yours on the published paper. I suppose it would be as good as
Bing.

> you could always reverse engineered software on your machine

And be patent trolled out of existence if you ever used it.

~~~
wslh
> And be patent trolled out of existence if you ever used it.

No, reverse engineering is legal, and projects like Samba or my company full
reversing (4 products) of closed source Microsoft projects hasn't be sued.
More on that: we have been contacted by Microsoft if we need something special
that they can test for compliant on newer operating systems.

Try the same web scraping the google search engine (something more "benign"
and they will show you a page saying that you can't automate the search
process.

~~~
rbanffy
The only thing that prevents Microsoft from suing you is their belief you do
not harm their business.

And by scraping Google search results you are using their servers.

------
hexagonc
One obstacle to a company developing a "hacker ethic" is invention assignment
clauses in employee agreements. There seems to be a fundamental tension
between carefree experimentation and "everything you build which is even
remotely related to our business belongs to us". If you are passionate about
your job -- and many companies want you to be passionate -- and if you are a
hacker/builder then sooner or later you're probably going to create something
that falls into the purview of an assignment agreement. For example, let's say
you work for a game company and in your spare time, hack up a new way to do
game physics. Even if you don't work on the game physics team, even if the
company is already committed to using a third party physics engine, they may
argue that your engine belongs to them. You have to entrust the fruits of your
hacking to _their_ stewardship; even if they allow the code to be open-
sourced, it will go under their public Github account, not yours.

I don't offer a solution to this problem; it is understandable that a company
will feel you owe them something if you hack up something cool using the
tricks and knowledge you gained while working for them. The more they
encourage tinkering and play, the more they trade in creativity and
innovation, the more they might suffer if an employee goes to another company
with his/her hacks. I suppose it comes down to how much you trust the
management of the company. A company can still have bad management, even if
they mostly stand for hacker values. You may hack up a cool solution to a
problem but the company may be unable to use it in a project because they are
already implementing an inferior solution and are committed to a certain
release date. Your hack might end up in a corporate purgatory; your company
may refuse to use it in a product due to politics, "not invented here"
syndrome of the team that would incorporate the hack, or competing priorities.
However, the company will not allow you to take the hack to your next employer
because they may claim you used company know-how to build it. The fear of
litigation can be just as potent as the actual legal case for it. Even
companies like Redhat or Mozilla may have trade secret/invention disclosure
clauses that prevent employees from fully embracing "hacker ethics" even if
they are better than most.

~~~
georgespencer
> Even if you don't work on the game physics team, even if the company is
> already committed to using a third party physics engine, they may argue that
> your engine belongs to them.

Because it's trivial to argue that the ambient knowledge and literal
intellectual property that went into developing such an engine were as a
direct result of your employment. The conversation at the water cooler. The
knowledge that Employee X is having a frustrating time with verlet integration
and collision detection. The knowledge you built-up working with great people
over the last 3-4 years etc.

~~~
capisce
But as soon as you leave you are free to do whatever you want, and the current
employer also benefits greatly from the knowledge you gained at your previous
jobs (which might be a large part of the reason they hired you in the first
place). They shouldn't be able to claim ownership to the knowledge that's in
your head.

------
raverbashing
This is an example of loaded question.

Because it's assuming being for profit is fundamentally unethical (at least
according to 'Hacker Ethic').

No, there's nothing wrong in being for profit, you can follow your ethic and
make money, next question.

Unless like some you're so far removed from reality that you think any money
making is bad or several other examples that fit the definition of mental
disease.

~~~
mindcrime
_Because it's assuming being for profit is fundamentally unethical (at least
according to 'Hacker Ethic')._

OP here... I don't at all assume that being for-profit is fundamentally
unethical. As I said in the article, my own company, Fogbeam Labs, is a
startup attempting to build a business around F/OSS software. I have no
question that a company can, under at least some specific circumstances,
manage profitability and at least some adherence to the Hacker Ethic, which is
why I mentioned Red Hat.

What I question is this: is adhering to the Hacker Ethic (for some reasonable
definition of "hacker ethic") _generally_ compatible with building a for
profit company? And if a company succeeds in doing both, can they _keep_ both
over a long period of time? Or is there something about the nature of
companies that must pursue profitability, which intrinsically works to counter
the Hacker Ethic?

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IgorPartola
TFA is wrong. First, Red Hat is not "for profit", they are for profit. This
publicly traded company would not exist if they were not making money.

Second, Google is killing RSS, on purpose, and for profit. Is this amoral? No,
they have a license to do so, which is called capitalism and the free market.
Capitalism is simply a way to align personal and collective incentives for
profit with the common good. Generally, it is a great thing, but there are
casualties. Products with a vocal user base will be killed because those
products were not profitable and will hinder further growth of other products.
Bourbon will be diluted, Google Reader will be discontinued. Is that amoral?
If so, then all of capitalism is. Instead, you are asking for a society where
as long as someone is using your product, you are obligated to support it and
maybe even give it away for free. Raising prices equates to greed, and
discontinuing products to evil. Apply this logic to your ventures and tell me
if that really is the society you want.

------
firebrand39
Glad that the fogbeam guy asked. Me always thought that Google was 'better'
than, say, Microsoft and if google were to become just another 'evil'
organisation, that would be troubling. So here is my take. The key word for me
is organisation, not profit. Anybody who has been working for a big
organisation for a while knows how dysfunctional and political they can be.
Completely distracted from whatever 'official' goal they have, profit or not.
There seems to be a natural live cycle to any organisation. Grandiosely, call
it the Rome Syndrome. Start from honest and humble yet promising beginnings,
growth and consolidation, peak power, decay and death. Some companies survive
but get hollowed out and survive only in name (e.g. IBM).

In light of this, in order to not become 'evil', google has to work on its
organisation. And they do, Rubin's and Huber's exit, spring cleaning etc..
Also, all the smart technology google has could allow them to avoid bloated
bureaucracies, hence not becoming evil.

But they are no Uber-humans. So let's see.

Firebrand

------
kryptiskt
I think the Hacker Ethic works just fine with a for-profit company. What it is
incompatible with is bureaucracy, which is all about control and
predictability, and successful companies tend to acquire one of those with
time.

------
pasbesoin
The mantra of "profit" [1] and "capitalism" has become suffused with the same
absolutism that has tainted so many religions, to their eventual detriment.

While expounding upon the virtue of the individual, it is simultaneously
devaluing and grinding down an endless number of them.

It is really about the "select" individual. If you are not selected, you do
not matter. And participation is no guarantee of selection.

Rather than the ostensible goal, look at what the proponent is willing to do
to achieve it. Judge accordingly.

\--

[1] also present, in somewhat different disguise, in many formally "not-for-
profit" endeavors

------
orangethirty
Yes, I think it is. There can be a balance. Just like Costco has shown that
companies can be good to their employees and still profit. Problem is a lot of
people just focus on the money and not on society. After all my years doing
business, I've realized that businesses have an obligation if serving society.
They only exist because society has allowed them to.

------
aaronbrethorst
What is the OP's definition of the Hacker Ethic?

~~~
yiransheng
I believe the author [linked to
wikipedia](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic>) when he used the term.

------
kushti
Google never had The Hacker Ethic (only marketing buzz about it). So that't
not a question )

~~~
mindcrime
That's definitely one take on it. But I feel like _something_ has changed at
Google over the past few years. At one time they seemed to really balance the
whole "be a profitable public company" thing with "be hacker friendly" pretty
well. Lately they seem to be displaying more typical "big, greedy, evil
corporation" behavior.

Or at least it seems that way to me.

------
cscurmudgeon
The answer: Yes, if the "Hacker Ethic" is pure unabashed self-righteousness.

