The Home Page of Hacker Lore

This page collects documents on hacker culture, folklore and humor. You'll find here the key resources you need to read to understand the people who built Unix, the Internet, the World Wide Web, and Linux.

This site is specifically intended to help those not familiar with the background facts uinderstand the context of the SCO-vs.-IBM lawsuit. Materials with special relevance to that lawsuit are highlighted like this.

If you don't know why so much of the content of this site has my name on it, this may help explain. I expect the percentage of stuff that's mine to drop over time as other people contribute links and documents.

You can see what's new on this site.

How To Become A Hacker

Start here. This is the basic document on the character of hackers, widely accepted as authoritative within the culture itself. Translations are available in many languages.

The Jargon File

This is perhaps the most important single foundation document of the hacker culture. The original version dated to 1973. I have maintained it since 1991.

There are several directions you can go from here. There is a page of hacker humor, and another one on learning to deal with hackers (or becoming one yourself). There is a page of serious history and anthropology.

For convenience, here is a link to the OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint.