The spirit of hacking

A couple days ago I stumbled upon a post regarding the HTC HD2 on Engadget. Although it wasn't the first post on that particular subject, the attached video got me really thinking. Here it is:

Regardless of what it might look like, this post is not about the HD2 or its cousin the Evo 4G. This post is about the word "hacking". You see, not so long ago, I was one of those people who believed hacking was something bad, wrong and most importantly, dangerous. Dangerous because it involved someone, who was a lot more clever than me, trying to get access into my computer, having success and eventually doing some nasty stuff in my computer. I might not have any Nobel-prize winner software in the works, but still, what's inside my computer is valuable to me, as it is to you. That's why I moved on from downloading firewalls & antivirus software as well as searching for cracks, and just went with something safe and legal: Kaspersky Internet Security.

 

Then I read this amazing article on Wired online, about hacking, or more importantly, about hackers. As it turns out, if there weren't any hackers out there, technology, or more specifically, software, wouldn't have become so powerful as we know it is today. What? Have I gone crazy? No. The problem is, we're wrong about the definition of hackers, because they're not those people sitting behind their desks trying to break into my computer or into yours, they're the people who see a 20-foot wall in front of them, and set to climb it, by themselves. A hacker is a person who strives to make software go beyond its original purpose, and become something more than just code built for a commercial purpose. There are a couple of hacker sub-cultures, but the important part is what they share: their unwillingness to believe everything's done. Whatever has been achieved already, it can still be improved, always. Another trait of "traditional" hackers is that they don't rest until their goal is complete, and when it is, then it's time to move on to the next. Hackers can spend hours and hours in front of a computer, especially at night, with a firm belief in the code & software they're writing, since it's no less than art and beauty, and most importantly, because computers can change lives for the better. Hackers do not believe in selling their breakthroughs and achievements, because that's not their purpose. All they want is to improve all our lives, by improving existing technology. This is known as The Hacker's Ethics, which is especially followed by one of the hacker sub-cultures. Hacking is how renowned programmers like Mr. Bill Gates started, and it's also how Mark Zuckerberg, the mind behind Facebook, began tinkering with IM software before giving the world a new meaning for the words "social network". What exactly did they used to do? Well, they used to do things just for fun, for the challenge, and not looking for any commercial success. Granted, those two men I mentioned met financial success with their work, but that doesn't mean the world is not sharing many hacker's work without them receiving any royalties. Need an example? How about Tetris? Tetris was designed & written by Alexey Pajitnov while working for the Soviet Union, and even though the game was a huge success, Pajitnov did not make a lot of money from it until 1996 because the rights previously belonged to the Soviet Union. In fact, videogames were invented at MIT by a group of hackers.

But then, with the Internet and its security issues, the word "hacker" and "hacking" were misused for intruders in our home computers. These people might be hackers because they break boundaries, but they're not according to The Hacker's ethic, and like Alexey, there have been a lot of hackers in history which have not met the success others have. We might all know about Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs or Linus Torvalds, but very few of us remember Richard Stallman, leader of the GNU Project and founder of the Free Software Foundation, Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs himself and built (by hand) the Apple I and Apple II computers or Alan Kay, who was one of the minds behind object-oriented programming (Smalltalk, C++, Objective-C, Java and many others) as well as window-based user interfaces (which we enjoy in Mac OS X, Windows and Linux). However, some claim the passion for and the true spirit of hacking has been lost since some time ago, possibly due to some hacker's incredible success, which went against The Hacker's Ethic, but I believe that's not true.

Now is when the YouTube video comes in. Was the HTC HD2 designed to run Android? No, I don't believe so. And if you think this hacker "only" needed to pull the kernel from an HTC Evo's Android build and put it into the open source OS, you're wrong because, to begin with, the HD2 and the Evo do not share the same physical hardware, and in the video, you can clearly see how the back button works appropriately. So there was some hacking in there, no doubt. Then you could also argue that the HD2 is a smartphone and that Android was designed to run in such devices, but then here comes Ubuntu, which was built for desktop computers and their x86 compatible CPUs and not for ARMs. But there is an ARM port, isn't there? So it can't be so hard… Watch the video again, and notice how the OS responds to the user's touch as if it were a mouse. That requires some coding, and reflects the spirit of true hacking. But this is neither the first, nor the last time.

 

There are devices specifically targeted for hackers, such as the Android Developer Phones or the Nexus One (which are rooted or are easily rooted), the Nokia N900, and in some ways the Palm Pre, which has seen a lot of clever hacking due to the more traditional Linux kernel lying underneath webOS. And if iPhone users think that by simply jailbreaking their devices they've done some clever hacking, I think they're wrong. True hackers know no bounds, and sometimes, our passion is linked to these devices, and we simply want to see them "do stuff" they can't do, which might not mean anything to most people, but it can mean the world to us. Need an example? Here you go:

Yup, an iPhone multi-tasking similarly to how a Palm Pre does, with the cards interface. Now I ask you, was it necessary? Did it add anything to the multi-tasking already available to jailbroken iPhones? No, but it's a clear example of hacking, and it's a clear example of why I believe these small pocket computers are making the spirit of hacking from the 80s live on. There are many other examples, such as Doom running natively in a Palm Pre or the PlayStation emulator for the iPhone which were both done at a time when there was no official SDK!! Of course, we can't forget about the ROM community behind Android, especially Cyanogen, who like other "cooks" is also keeping those old G1s alive, as well as offering an alternative build for new devices. But hacking is not only in the big stuff, it's also in the details, like enabling the Nexus One's trackball to light up in different colors or ending a call by closing the Palm Pre's sliding keyboard. I encourage our readers to comment on their favorite hacks, on any platform, since I'm sure there's still a lot of amazing stuff we don't know about, let alone tried out ourselves.

 

Hackers don't rest, don't sleep, and can't stop thinking about their goal, which might be bringing an essential feature to users not provided by the software giants (like saving apps in the SDCard or taking snapshots of the screen in Android, multi-tasking in the iPhone or breathing life into an abandoned device) or simply making any computer do something it doesn't already do because most people don't need it, except a hacker. The only message we want to give is, thank you. Thank you for all your hours of restless effort, and for making the mobile community a whole lot richer.

Photos courtesy of Flickr & deviantART users.