Episode: 285
Title: HPR0285: Hacker
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0285/hpr0285.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 15:33:17

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This episode of Hacker Public Radio is brought to you by the word Hacker and the letters
H, P and R. Hi, my name is Gordon Sincler, my handle on IRC is Thistleweb. This episode
of Hacker Public Radio is aimed at asking a question of the free and open source community
at a large, just to start thinking about issues like this. The question is, is it holding
us back to keep referring to ourselves in terms that the mass media have already redefined
in negative terms? The one that obviously springs to mind is the one that inspired this
episode, is the word Hacker. Now, we know what a Hacker is, but if you do a word association
with the mainstream public, they have a different perception. They get their perception from
TV shows, from movies, from current affairs programs, from documentaries, from news stories.
Invariably, when they see stories involving hackers, the hacker is always the bad guy, the
hacker is the criminal, the hacker is the one who is causing harm. They are the ones who
invariably are linked with all sorts of other international crimes, like drug trafficking,
people trafficking, gun running, you know, counterfeit goods, credit card selling, you know,
credit card numbers, funding of terrorism, you know, all this type of stuff is all lumped
into one big thing, and hackers hacking is only one part of that. The people who have been
conditioned, computer users who have been conditioned over the years that you can't run your
Windows system without protection programs, like antivirus and esp茄ware firewalls, all
these different things, to try and keep your stuff away from the quote, hackers unquote,
that hackers are going to write all these programs to try and get ways onto your computer to
steal your data. So people think of hackers as in negative terms, and here we are, now it's
2009, Linux is already, for people who use it, people who listen to this feed, we know
that Linux has been ready for a long time, maybe two or three years, the Linux desktop
has been really ready for the big time, the server is a lot longer than that, we know that
we are a serious credible alternative to Microsoft, in so many ways, we know that governments
can save a fortune in taxes by switching to Linux, now in fairness, the money they would
save then probably get squandered in some other way, at least the money wouldn't go
into Microsoft license fees, we know that schools could save a fortune by switching to
Linux, again, where they would squandered that saving in other ways, well that's another
issue. Linux is a serious credible alternative, the juggernaut known as Ubuntu is making all
sorts of headlines, and I'll continue to make even more headlines, and by headlines
I mean, it's bushing through into the mainstream media, not just confined to the IT media.
So the more that happens, the more the companies and governments and schools, and all these
organisations are being pressure on them to get more bang for the buck, to save money
to cut costs, one of these ways that they can cut them is by looking at switching over
to a Linux solution instead of Microsoft, now on one hand they've got all these various
reports that are coming to them in the mainstream media, about companies saving money by switching
to Santos for their servers, or switching to slide desktops instead of Vista, and they're
looking at that thinking, well what is this Linux thing, because it's getting more and
more press, it's getting more and more attention, so I'm going to look at this, and when they
look into it, they're obviously going to look online, and what they're going to come across
is a lot of people talking in terms like hacker, you know, if they go on to look at articles
and blog posts and forums, and I've downloaded a few episodes of podcasts, you have people
on there in comments and things like that, referring to themselves as hackers, oh yeah,
I got started off on such and such a product, that I was a debaing hacker years ago, and
now we know that the definition of hacker is different from what they're thinking, but they've
been conditioned by the mainstream media to think that hacker is negative, then they see that
this Linux is free of cost, most lives free of cost, unless you start looking at the two main
vendors being, well suppose you could call Sun, you could put Sun in that as well with their
Solaris, but the two main vendors obviously that spring to mind are Red Hat and Novel,
now to man knowledge, the licensees, the money you pay them is for the support, rather than the
actual product, but these are corporations behind them, the corporations have some corporate
focus, they have, as I say goes, they have somebody to sue if something goes wrong,
every other Linux outside of that appears to be a website controlled by no one,
it's a small community, relatively small community of people, with email addresses,
who work part time on things, there's no cerebral centre entity behind it, there's no corporate
thing behind it, and then they look into that and say, and see, well look, there are a lot of hackers
that work on these programs, why is it free? Is it that much of a stretch to think that the reason
it's free is because they want to get the hackers want you to run these Linux distributions
so that they can then, they've got a back door onto your machine, we know that's not true,
but it's not that much of a stretch when you're using the term hacker and they've been conditioned
to think that hacker is negative, not especially when you add that to
and that the bigger organizations and governments and schools and whatever, when Microsoft
hear that some company has the audacity to decide for themselves, what computers are going to use
and they decide that Microsoft is too expensive and that they're looking for an alternative,
as per usual, swoop in with the suits and tell these companies, tell these the people
who are making the decision, anything they need to to get them to stay with Microsoft,
we know that the truth in reality does not enter into that, it's a reality free zone
when Microsoft get involved at that level, we know that, so we are essentially
playing into their hands, when Microsoft use the the fud angle of all these Linux guys,
they're all you can't trust them, they're all they're all thieves, they're stealing our software,
you know, they're stealing our property and they're not paying for it and if you use them,
then you could be getting sued as well, there's no entity behind them, there's no
no central office that you can brick and mortar office, that you can go down and phone or
you know, and what legal jurisdiction did they come into? I mean, for example,
Debian is listed on digital watch as worldwide, if something goes wrong with a Debian system
and you need to sue them, what jurisdiction did they come under?
Well, first thing to point out there is Linux is for them, I don't know about Red Hat or
Slade, but every Linux that I've used I've installed comes with a disclaimer at the start
that says, bloke by installing a software, there's no warranty, it's a community supported
thing, there is no warranty if something goes wrong, it's your problem, you know,
we know that Linux is very well programmed and the community support is generally very good,
especially with the mainstream distributions that that's not going to be an issue,
but these are all things that play into Microsoft's FUD when they are,
when we are trying to appeal to a very conservative mindset, because corporations, schools,
governments, they are very conservative by nature, when they put plans in place, when they're
discussing something, some new direction to take, the outcome won't happen for another
year, year and a half, maybe in two years, so they need to know stability, they need to try and
be able to predict what the situation is going to be in a couple of years, they are conservative
by mindset, the last thing they want is something that has no central entity, has been put together
by people who are self-confessed hackers, who Microsoft have told them are stealing their software,
who the mass media tell them, Bill Hackers are invariably involved in stolen goods and, you know,
credit card sales and funding of terrorism and people trafficking and all that,
is it so much of a stretch for them to assume or for Microsoft to plan in their minds that,
well, these guys are illegal, the Linux is illegal, the only legal choice you've got to stay
in with Microsoft just sign the contract, you know, and we'll put all these new Vista machines in,
you know, you won't have a budget to educate your kids, but at least you'll have Vista in all your
machines, which is all we care about, you know, so it's not that much of a stretch for them to be able
to plan in the minds that if these hackers are making this software and distributing it free,
what's the cost? The cost may be that there's back doors, that it's A, it's stolen software,
B, that it's got lots of back doors into it, that allow these hackers to then steal your data,
is that more of a risk than some corporate entity where you can just pay for your corporate
license, for your anti-virus, your corporate license, for your firewalls, software, and, you know,
have some Windows code monkey employed to make sure that it's locked down as much as possible,
and at least you've got a, you've got a FTSE 100 name to sue or to be held accountable if all goes
if all goes to pop, so we know that that's not, we know that that's all fun, we know that we are
a serious credible alternative to Microsoft, we know that the vast majority of solutions
for people are going to be better with Linux than they are with Windows, there are some exceptions
obviously, we know that we are there, we know that, but the point is the mass media have already
got a negative impression of offhacker, so a bit alongwinded, I do apologise, I'm still getting
used to this, I do these in one take and sometimes I feel I'm running on a little bit, I'm sorry for
that, so the long and short of it is, should we be starting to think of redefining that, or
not redefining it, but giving up on terms that have already been redefined, it's more good as
keeping going on about, about the term hiker, and insisting that everyone else has the wrong
definition of the word hiker, it's not going to do any good at all, so is it worth
as gradually just dropping these terms and stop using these terms, now that Linux is more mainstream,
we are not the little plucky outsider now, we are initially where it was just for geeks,
but we're not now, when Microsoft have for a long time used the argument that all Linux is just
for geeks, where all you have to use the command line, they don't even have a GUI yet, well we know
that's that's not true, but a lot of people that have never even used Linux have fallen for that,
or they've used Linux eight years ago and nine years ago, and it was pretty much what Microsoft
said it was, we know it's not true, but you know that's the perception people have, so as we are
trying to appeal to the more, Linux is ready, for the most part it's ready, it's mainstream,
or it's potentially mainstream, it's going to get even more mainstream, is it worth
or it's starting to look ahead from that, and starting to look a little bit more professional,
just by the choice of words that we use, hacker is the obvious one, but there's going to be more
as well that people can think of, so anyway this is going on a bit longer than I had planned,
so I'm going to call an end at that, and I hope to hear this spark of some,
some discussions and forums and blogs and articles and IRC and other podcasts, and whatever,
to get people talking, to hear different views on this, so anyway I have been and there will be,
and I continue to be Gordon Sinclair, my IRC handle is Thistleweb, and if you want to contact me
via email, it's thistle.webcast at googlemail.com, and until next time.
Thank you for listening to Hack with Public Radio, HPR is sponsored by Carol.net,
so head on over to car0.nc for all of the three.