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Comment by bittired | Hacker News Reader

This brings up a good question: Is RMS a hacker?

He has made important contributions, and at one point could have been considered so, but what has he created lately that is worthy of the title? Some titles like "doctor" are really indicative of the education, not of being a current practitioner, but "hacker" is not one of those titles.

Maybe someone should create an official overseeing body of hackers like "The U.S. Board of Hackers" and a social organization called "The Hacking Society" to go with it, and I could go to school and come out and in front of my name on all formal letters would thereafter be "Hacker". But, until then, I think he was but isn't.

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I don't think it's "fair" to say that someone who initiated the free software movement, wrote the first versions of GCC, GNU Emacs, the core utils, … is not a hacker anymore because he is dedicating his life to something else than coding and coding and coding.

I really don't see the need to formalize what a hacker is and who correspond to those criteria, especially the way you present it where it would be tied to one country, which is not really compatible with the hacker culture as I see it.

No, what I was saying was that is how the art of medicine handles the official label of "Doctor". That is country-specific. A doctor from the Caribbean != doctor educated in the U.S. Two different governing boards, and I would opt for not being treated by the latter, not because it guarantees that they are incompetent, but because I would have to question competence. A doctor educated in the U.S. could still be incompetent, but I'd have greater confidence in their education and certification.

My point is this: will we consider RMS to be a hacker when he is 98 years old after he has given up coding for years? If he was a doctor, we'd still call him a doctor, but I'm not sure that holds true for hacker. Now, if you call RMS a hacker and enough people do, maybe that is enough to show that he meets the definition still? Is creativity and the ability to write code in C enough when the language and environment has completely changed in the future?

Okay I see your point. Your question is valid, and my previous answer is my opinion about it.

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