History

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Before communications between computers and computer users were as networked as they are now, there were multiple independent and parallel hacker subcultures, often unaware or only partially aware of each others' existence.^{[citation needed]} All of these had certain important traits in common:^{[citation needed]}

• Creating software and sharing it with each other
• Placing a high value on freedom of inquiry; hostility to secrecy
• Information-sharing as both an ideal and a practical strategy
• Upholding the right to fork
• Emphasis on rationality
• Distaste for authority
• Playful cleverness, taking the serious humorously and their humor seriously

These sorts of subcultures were commonly found at academic settings such as college campuses.^{[citation needed]} The MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the University of California, Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University were particularly well-known hotbeds of early hacker culture.^{[citation needed]} They evolved in parallel, and largely unconsciously, until the Internet, where a legendary PDP-10 machine at MIT, called AI, that was running ITS, provided an early meeting point of the hacker community.^{[citation needed]} This and other developments such as the rise of the free software movement drew together a critically large population and encouraged the spread of a conscious, common, and systematic ethos.^{[citation needed]} Symptomatic of this evolution were an increasing adoption of common slang and a shared view of history, similar to the way in which other occupational groups have professionalized themselves but without the formal credentialing process characteristic of most professional groups.^{[citation needed]}
Over time, the academic hacker subculture has tended to become more conscious, more cohesive, and better organized.^{[citation needed]} The most important consciousness-raising moments have included the composition of the first Jargon File in 1973, the promulgation of the GNU Manifesto in 1985, and the publication of The Cathedral and the Bazaar in 1997.^{[citation needed]} Correlated with this has been the gradual recognition of a set of shared culture heroes, including: Bill Joy, Donald Knuth, Dennis Ritchie, Alan Kay, Ken Thompson, Richard M. Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall, and Guido Van Rossum.^{[citation needed]}
The concentration of academic hacker subculture has paralleled and partly been driven by the commoditization of computer and networking technology, and has in turn accelerated that process.^{[citation needed]} In 1975, hackerdom was scattered across several different families of operating systems and disparate networks;^{[citation needed]} today it is largely a Unix and TCP/IP phenomenon, and is concentrated around various operating systems based on free software and open-source software development.^{[citation needed]}