Some Thoughts On The Idea Of Hacker Culture.

The main principle at work here is the so-called "Hackers Ethic". And its practice is the usual, daily activity of hackers. To put it very simply, without going deeper into its precise content, the hacker ethic runs strikingly parallel to the formula "lart pour lart (art for arts sake). What matters here, is the realisation that, unlike activists, hackers are focused on the pursuit of knowledge and the exercise of curiosity for its own sake. Therefore, the obligations that derive from the hacker ethic are perceived by genuine hackers as sovereign and not instrumental, and always prevail above other aims or interests, whatever these may be - and if there are any at all. This consequently makes the hackers movement to be wary of any particular blueprint of society, however alternative, and even adverse to embrace particular antagonism (some hackers, and not minor ones, are for instance loath to demonise the Microsoft Corporation). Hence the spread of political and philosophical opinions harboured by individual hackers, without any loss of their feeling of identity and belonging to the mouvance at large or even their particular group, is truly astonishing, and very unlikely to obtain within any other new social movement. In fact, the militant defense of individual liberties and a penchant for rather unequalitarian economic convictions one encounters in tandem among a good many hackers has provided for bafflement among networked political (i.e. left-leaning) activists coming to be better acquainted with their natural allies. Yet it is neither fortuitous nor aberrant that the Californian transmutation of libertarianism enjoys such widespread support among hackers.
http://cryptome.org/hacker-idea.htm