October 12th, 2005
Hackers Ship Software Before They Put On Pants
The first paragraph of the foreward by Blake Ross to Hacking Firefox : More Than 150 Hacks, Mods, and Customizations by Mel Reyes reads:
If software is an art—and I think it is—then I must be the only artist in the world who advocates defacing his own work. But if ever there was a product designed for hacking, Firefox is it. Because Firefox is an open-source project, its lifeblood—its source code—is available to hackers the world over. And I do mean hackers. These guys ship software before they put on pants.
That kicked me. In a good way. BTW, ever tried asking the law enforcers on what they define a hacker as? 😉
October 14th, 2005 at 10:35 pm
> I must be the only artist in the world who advocates
> defacing his own work
Talk about blowing your own trumpet – Another artform where people advocate defacing their own work can be found in music. HipHop and its sampling history, for example. In writing, Bryon Gysin’s cut-up technique, as used by William Burroughs, is another – let’s cut-up Burroughs. A further example would be Raymond Queneau’s ‘100, 000, 000, 000, 000 Poems’.
Not to mention whether software can actually be classed as art. If that is the case, he’s just one amongst the thousands of other Free Software hackers.