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Cowboys and the Eternal September:
Transfiguration of Hacker Aesthetics
Masayuki HATTAa)
Abstract: The concept of a hacker originated in the 1970s, and
began to gradually take shape in the 1980s. It began to be
discussed actively in various contexts, particularly in relation with
the rise of open-source operating systems such as GNU and Linux
in the 1990s until the early 2000s. Subsequently, as the times
changed, the qualities that were demanded of reputable
programmers changed in a major way. Originally, the programmers’
capabilities in terms of writing code were most important, while their
sociability was less emphasized. However, as computers became
more common among the general public, and their social impact
increased, hackers were required to be more socially amenable in
various ways. Therefore, a large number of open-source projects
introduced codes of conduct.
Keywords: hacker culture, organization culture, open source,
project management
a) Surugadai University, 698 Azu, Hanno-shi, Saitama, Japan, 357-8555, hatta.masayuki@surugadai.ac.jp
The authors declare there are no competing interests.
A part of this article was presented at the ABAS Conference 2021 Summer (Hatta, 2021).
© 2021 Masayuki Hatta. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0 (Attribution 4.0 International) license. The CC BY 4.0 license
permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
Annals of Business Administrative Science
https://doi.org/10.7880/abas.0210923a
Received: September 23, 2021; accepted: November 11, 2021
Published in advance on J-STAGE: November 19, 2021
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Introduction
Our current information society was built by the activities of
computer programmers. The concept of a hacker materialized in the
1970s, and gradually took a clearer shape starting from the 1980s. It
was voraciously discussed in various contexts, particularly in
relation with the flourishing open-source operating systems such as
GNU and Linux in the 1990s until the early 2000s. The image of a
hacker was akin to an antisocial antihero, rebelling against
regulations and bureaucracy.
As the times changed, the qualities that were demanded of
reputable programmers changed in a prominent way. Originally, the
programmers’ capabilities in terms of writing code were most
prioritized, while their lack of aptitude in group activities and lower
social skills were not emphasized, resorting to “talking via code.”
However, as computers became more widespread, it became
necessary for programmers to become more socially
amenable. Despite this phenomenon, the general image of a hacker
has remained the same to this day. This study aims to resolve the
discrepancy between the current image of hackers and reality.
Hackers as Cowboys
Since the 1980s, the piece of literature that has most influenced
society’s general view of hackers was probably Steven Levy’s Hackers,
first published in 1984 (Levy, 2010).1 Interviewing over 140 people,
Levy’s portrayal of hacker culture and their image defined how society
viewed them for many years afterward.2
1 A second edition was published in 1994, and a 25-year anniversary edition
was published in 2010.
2 There was criticism that in Levy’s portrayal of hackers, he overly simplified
the actual various backgrounds of the hackers (e.g., Rolfe, 2016).
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3
The world of computer programmers, originally developed on the
foundation of academia centered on colleges and research institutes,
allowed for cultivation of their own sets of values, mentalities, and a
sense of “aesthetics.” Notably, Levy (2010, pp. 40–46) asserts that the
hacker ethics presented as hacker culture and aesthetics is widely
known, which he summarizes as follows:
1. Access to computers
—
and anything that might teach you
something about the way the world works
—
should be
unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-on Imperative!
2. All information should be free.
3. Mistrust authority
—
promote decentralization.
4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria
such as degrees, age, race, or position.
5. You can create art and beauty on a computer.
6. Computers can change your life for the better.
In addition to the utopian statement that “computers can change
your life for the better,” it is noteworthy that the sentiment of anti-
authority and anti-centralization is already apparent at this stage.3
Levy portrayed hackers as similar to Robin Hood, who was both a
“thief” and a hero, where it was considered noble to counter the
authority of computers in restricting freedom, refusing to depend on
existing authorities such as nations or universities, and acting on the
basis of their own coding abilities. Additionally, the “phone
phreaking,” known as a prime example of early “hacking,” was
deemed to be unauthorized usage of the long-distance phone system,
and thus illegal in the end.4 This image of the hacker was reproduced
3 There is a common thread through the current dark image (Hatta, 2020b)
and claims like “the right to tinker” (Hatta, 2020a).
4 The development of the blue box device that allowed phreaking, later
involved Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the founders of Apple (Lapsley,
2013).
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in the fields of fiction and entertainment as well (Chandler, 1996) and
was often associated with cyberpunk science fiction culture.
Therefore, it is no wonder that the first person to write literature
likening hackers to cowboys was Bruce Sterling, one of the founders
of the cyberpunk movement in science fiction. Sterling (1994) stated,
“(h)ackers long for recognition as a praiseworthy cultural archetype,
the postmodern electronic equivalent of the cowboy and mountain
man,” calling cyberspace the “electronic frontier,” equating it with the
western frontier of the U.S. in the pioneering days. It is also no
accident that the name of an organization that continues to this day
to defend the rights of digital society is called Electronic Frontier
Foundation. 5 The West of the past was a lawless zone, where
everyone had to self-govern. Similarly, the electronic frontier is a
world where what is technologically possible is possible, regardless
of legality, and is considered to exist according to different criteria
than general society.6
An easy-to-understand example when considering a hacker-type
communication style is Crocker’s Rules, advocated by Lee Daniel
Crocker, who developed Wikipedia’s system, MediaWiki (Crocker,
2001). According to Crocker, people’s messages to others should be
optimized in terms of information volume, rather than whether they
are pleasant for the other. In this etiquette, if one feels offended by a
message, they must accept that as their own responsibility. Anyone
can call you an idiot, and you can assert that to be a kind act. As
asserted by Crocker, when two people adopt Crocker’s Rules, they do
not need to paraphrase or socially format their words, which allows
for all of the necessary information to be communicated in the
5 According to Levy, hackers who code for the common good are present-day
Robin Hoods.
6 In the Jargon File, Levy-like hacker ethic is designated as 1, while an
aesthetic that does not relinquish these types of illegal acts is designated
as 2 (Raymond, 2003).
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minimum amount of time, reflecting the hacker spirit that
emphasizes rationality over feelings.7
Cowboys Are Bad People
The image of the cowboy hacker, evaluated only on their coding
ability and does not recognize authority, is the inverse of depicting
them as lacking cooperation and social skills. If they can be praised
for their abilities, they can be caustically lambasted for their lack of
ability.
The technical journalist Paulina Borsook pointed out this dark side
of hacker culture early on (Borsook, 2001). As the title Cyberselfish
indicates, Borsook asserted that the tech community culture was
selfish, libertarian, anti-government, and anti-regulation in
character (especially on the West coast of the U.S.). She said that,
however, this pursuit of freedom also includes “the freedom to be an
asshole.” Moreover, an overwhelming majority of the tech community
at the time were highly educated white males, who tended to scorn
women who were thought to be inferior in technical skills, as also
indicated by Borsook. Hackers were originally a very uniform
segment made up of white, male engineers graduating from
top universities, the so-called “bro culture,” evaluating abilities in
absolute terms and encouraging a culture that disrespected women
and minorities.
Cowboy Coding
It has gradually come to light that the cowboy mentality introduces
both advantages and disadvantages to the efficiency of software
7 The Jargon File also states, “Hackers have relatively little ability to identify
emotionally with other people.” (Raymond, 2003)
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development. While the origin of the term is unclear, there is a
software development style called “cowboy coding.” According to
Ward’s Wiki, cowboy coding is a software development where
programmers have near autonomy. The programmer determines the
development schedule, programming language, algorithms,
development tools, development framework, and coding style, such
that one can state to have no official software development
management in this process. As a result, cowboy coding presents the
following four issues.
1. Lack of release structure: In corporate product development,
the product’s release schedule and delivery are
prioritized. However, because the majority of cowboy coding is
done as a hobby rather than as professional work, release
schedules are either taken lightly or ignored
altogether. Moreover, there are many cases where maintenance
is needed after product release in a normal product
development cycle, but such maintenance is often neglected in
cowboy coding. This can be explained by the mentality that
making a release plan and maintaining or fixing existing code
(even though it is sufficient for one’s purposes in many cases)
is not “fun” work.
2. Inexperienced developers: In many cases, cowboy coding
consists of hobbyists and students, etc., who are not dedicated
programmers working for a company. Rather, such developers
often work either by themselves or in small groups. As a result,
they do not follow the necessary procedures for developing a
large-scale system, such as a clear system build with careful
testing and version management. Therefore, there are certain
types of Brooks’ legal issues in which many external resources
cannot be invited smoothly when learning costs increase and a
project grows.
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3. Uncertain design requirements: Cowboy coding usually
involves development for the sake of fulfilling the individual
demand of cowboy developers. As such, developing something
that works is prioritized over a careful, premeditated
design. Therefore, when administering a larger-scale system,
the programmers are plagued with scalability issues and design
deficiencies such as inconsistent user interfaces.
4. Incompleteness: Once a cowboy developer’s personal needs are
satisfied, that project basically becomes unnecessary. In that
case, the programmers often lose motivation to continue
development.
This kind of cowboy coding was at least compatible with the initial
open-source development. For the time being, creating and
“scratching the itch” (Raymond, 2001) was a developer’s primary
motivation, and many projects naturally started on a very small
scale. Open-source licensing also freed the developer from
maintenance obligations, by enacting a “no guarantee”
condition. Even with a Full Scratch program that comes with defects
in an initial design, the programming improves in its artfulness
through that experience, and is not just a setback. Linux, which
experienced an almost Full Scratch at least twice, is a good
example. The image of a traditional hacker is very compatible with a
cowboy.
Cowboys Meet the Eternal September
One of the first cases that revealed the issues with traditional
hacker culture was that which is currently known as the “Eternal
September.” “Eternal September” is Internet slang for September
1993, specifically. In 1993, AOL officially entered the internet
provider market, causing the number of internet users to
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skyrocket. Until then, the month of September in which students
start their college terms in the U.S. was the only month that “new
users” went on the internet and learned the “netiquette” of internet
users largely made up of professionals and college students initially,
but that period extended to the rest of the year, thus being dubbed
“Eternal September.”
The old-timers generally dismissed and disregarded the new users
(newbies) in response to the popularization and commercialization of
the internet. This reaction did not necessarily come from elitism, but
from a mainstream perception at the time where users were simply
anxious that the more users there were, the likelier it would be for
Usenet to break (Vincent, 1995). The general users coming from AOL,
etc., were different people; thus, the main focus became to accept
those users experienced with the original culture, rather than forcing
integration of the newbies. In other words, there was rampant
tribalism where newbies who joined communities were met with an
onslaught of abuse (Smith, 2020).
As tribalism establishes a uniform organizational culture and
sense of purpose, it is not always negative; yet, excluding new
members is disadvantageous to the growth of the community for open
source that features acquisition competition of developers and
users. This was known experientially from an early stage, but
quantitative research on it has also emerged in recent years. For
example, Halfaker, Geiger, Morgan, and Riedl (2013) quantitatively
analyzed the growth of the English version of Wikipedia, and
discovered that in many online communities, there is a pattern where
even if there is an increase in the inflow of people despite there not
being much correlation between the number of achievements and
number of users and developers initially, development stagnates and
sometimes decreases. Moreover, there is preliminary research that
shows that there is more productivity in open-source projects with
more variety in gender and background (Vasilescu, Posnett, Ray, van
Cowboys and the Eternal September
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den Brand, Serebrenik, Devanbu, & Filkov, 2015).
Taming Cowboys by Code of Conduct
The qualities of hackers have not necessarily changed that much
in the last 30 years, but there have tended to be more disadvantages
than advantages in the efficiency of software development when
incorporating something considered beautiful in the past, with the
changing times. To resolve this issue, there is a movement to
introduce Codes of Conduct. Codes of Conduct do not have the legal
enforceability (so to speak) of a software license based on a copyright,
but can determine the appropriate standards of behavior as a
member of the community and authorize the release of a violator from
a mailing list, etc., in the worst-case scenario.
Codes of Conduct are not necessarily welcomed with open arms
when introduced. Developers accustomed to the old style sometimes
saw Codes of Conduct as putting shackles on one’s “freedom of
speech,” thus stagnating development. The Code of Conduct that
integrated the above type and the concerns of the old-timer
community resulted in the introduction of a Code of Conduct in the
Linux kernel system.
A Code of Conduct was introduced in a dev project on the Linux
Kernel in 2018. Linux creator Linus Torvalds discontinued Linux
kernel development “to apologize for past conduct and improve
conduct,” only 30 minutes after signing this Code of Conduct
(Prakash, 2018). Further, fierce debate sparked because the creator
of this Code of Conduct had caused a scandal in the past.
The original intent of introducing a Code of Content to Linux kernel
development had been to “make the kernel development community
a more accessible environment.” This Code of Conduct pledges, “In
the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as
contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our
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project and our community a harassment-free experience for
everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex
characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience,
education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance,
race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation” (The Kernel
Development Community, 2018). Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-
Hartman (effectively the No. 2 developer of the Linux kernel) signed
the Code of Conduct. Major developers like Intel’s Dan Williams and
Facebook’s Chris Mason also acted as signatories (Prakash, 2018).
However, the Linux development community up until that point
had been operating almost completely counter to this Code of
Conduct. There were frequent flame wars, and the conduct of the
main developers like Torvalds was extremely aggressive (especially
against powerless members). Thirty minutes after signing the Code
of Conduct, Torvalds sent an apologetic e-mail about his own
behavior to that point (Torvalds, 2018). The fact that he announced
a temporary break from development to improve his own behavior,
showed that he was toxic to the community up until then.
In the e-mail declaring his temporary retirement, Torvalds wrote
the following (Torvalds, 2018).
This week people in our community confronted me about my
lifetime of not understanding emotions. My flippant attacks in
emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially
at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch,
this made sense to me. I know now this was not OK and I am truly
sorry.
What can be gleaned from this message is Torvalds taking
preventative measures to avoid being questioned on violating the
Code of Conduct regarding previous behavior by apologizing at that
moment or being forced to apologize and take a break due to the new
Code of Conduct.
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Conclusion
Over a quarter century has passed since the word “hacker” has
emerged in mainstream media, and the image of the hacker
continues to change. Terms like “rock star,” “ninja,” and genius are
often used to describe hackers. This originates from those who
produce an enormous amount of work themselves, like the “10x
programmers,” as there are large disparities in the productivity of
programmers (DeMarco & Lister, 2013, Figure 8–2). This is an
unchanging characteristic that was already described as of 1975 by
Brooks (1995), “programming managers have long recognized wide
productivity variations between good programmers and poor
ones. But the actual measured magnitudes have astounded all of us”
(Brooks, 1995, p. 41). In short, he points to the concept that hiring
one excellent programmer is more important and efficient than hiring
100 mediocre programmers. This is the basis for justifying the battle
for talent in Silicon Valley that still continues today.
In this study, these kinds of top-notch programmers were called
“cowboys.” As summarized in Table 1, the image of an innovative,
risk-taking cowboy is a favorable persona when launching a
project. As such, the cowboys played a large role in developing
information technology. However, the cowboys whose slight social
issues were overlooked at the time, as there were no substitutes for
their work, have started to be criticized and re-evaluated in recent
years. This quality of a hacker has been expressed as “toxic” in recent
years (Van Rooij & Fine, 2018). This could be an impediment to
growth in full-fledged projects. The aforementioned case of Linus
Torvalds, and retirement from the Free Software Foundation, the
classic hacker organization of Richard M. Stallman, who was deemed
to be a classic hacker by Levy (2010), can be said to be examples of
this (Porter, 2019).
Particularly in regard to the first stages of software development,
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trial and error and individual strengths are most important, and a
cowboy’s discretion and the uniform culture worked to their
advantage. However, initiation by the old-timers was made more
difficult due to the Eternal September. Moreover, as a project
matures, the number of people involved increases, such that not only
coding but also project management and design become more
important. Recently, data has become more important than open
source’s source code, which already exists in abundance, even
meriting the phrase “data is the new oil” (Yonego, 2014). Additionally,
there is growing awareness of social issues such as treatment of
minorities, especially in the U.S. In these circumstances, cowboys
would alienate potential newcomers from projects and impede
growth. To combat that, many open-source projects have introduced
a Code of Conduct, but opposition remains.
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Early stage Matured stage
Cowboys Innovative Reckless, toxic
Tamed Risk-averse Team players
Note: Italic indicates non-preferred characteristics.
Source: the author.
Cowboys and the Eternal September
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