This ethic is not espoused by all hackers, who love to debate and argue the meaning of their own actions. But taking the hacker ethic as an ideal, intrinsic within it is the idea that information is supposed to benefit everyone. This concept of freely circulating information was especially valuable to those collaborating on iterative hardware and software improvements in the early days, when there was no possibility of proprietary profit.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 71