Why treat software as a zero-cost commodity when the
market said otherwise? As the 1970s gave way to the
1980s, selling software became more than a way to
recoup costs; it became a political statement. At a
time when the Reagan Administration was rushing to
dismantle many of the federal regulations and spending
programs that had been built up during the half century
following the Great Depression, more than a few
software programmers saw the hacker ethic as
anticompetitive and, by extension, un-American. At
best, it was a throwback to the anticorporate attitudes
of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like a Wall Street
banker discovering an old tie-dyed shirt hiding between
French-cuffed shirts and double-breasted suits, many
computer programmers treated the hacker ethic as an
embarrassing reminder of an idealistic age.
For a man who had spent the entire 1960s as an
embarrassing throwback to the 1950s, Stallman didn't
mind living out of step with his peers. As a programmer
used to working with the best machines and the best
software, however, Stallman faced what he could only
describe as a "stark moral choice": either get over his
ethical objection for " proprietary" software-the term
Stallman and his fellow hackers used to describe any
program that carried private copyright or end-user
license that restricted copying and modification-or
dedicate his life to building an alternate,
nonproprietary system of software programs.
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