Hacker Emblem

The Hacker Emblem was first proposed in October 2003 by Eric S. Raymond, claiming a need for a uniting and recognizable symbol for his perception of hacker culture. This does not refer to the hackers breaking into computers, which are called "crackers", but to the hacker culture around BSD, perl, GNU, Linux, etc; that is, the community around free software and open source.

Raymond has said that one does not claim to be a hacker by displaying this emblem, but suggests that "by using this emblem, you express sympathy with hackers' goals, hackers' values, and the hacker way of living" [ [http://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/ the Hacker Emblem page on Eric S. Raymond's site] ] .

The image itself is a representation of a glider formation in Conway's Game of Life.

Hackers also associate and represent themselves with mascots from notable free and open source projects such as the GNU Project's "Gnu" or more commonly the Linux kernel's "Tux". The "Dust Puppy" from the web comic "User Friendly" is also commonly associated with Hackers, Internet culture, and free and open source communities due that strip's coverage of those topics.

Other representations

Other means to display the image have evolved, mostly relying on ASCII art. Examples include:

.o. |_|0|_| [ ] [*] [ ] [ ] [0] [ ] 0 1 0 ..o |_|_|0| [ ] [ ] [*] [ ] [ ] [0] 0 0 1 ooo |0|0|0| [*] [*] [*] [0] [0] [0] 1 1 1

Minimal ASCII representation

On February 12, 2008, the minimal ASCII representation was incorporated into Raymond's list of canonical representations: [cite web
last=Raymond
first=Eric
authorlink=Eric S. Raymond
coauthors=Peter Danenberg
title=Re: Hacker Emblem
date=2008-02-12
url=http://danenberg.name/hacker-emblem
accessdate=2008-02-13]

...:

References

See also

*Hacker ethic
*Hacker (programmer subculture)

External links

* [http://www.catb.org/~esr/hacker-emblem/ The Glider: Proposal for a Hacker Emblem] Contains more information on the Hacker Emblem proposal, including SVG and TeX sources and FAQs.
* [http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html "How To Become a Hacker"] A document explaining the hacker culture.