Hacker Emblem

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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 he called crackers, but to the true hacker culture around BSD, perl, GNU, Linux, etc; that is, the community around free software and open source.

Raymond points out 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"^[1].

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

Contents 1 Other representations 1.1 Minimal ASCII representation 2 References 3 See also 4 External links

[edit] 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

[edit] Minimal ASCII representation

On February 12, 2008, the minimal ASCII representation was incorporated into the list of canonical representations:^[2]

 .
..:

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Hacker ethic
• Hacker (Free and Open Source Software)

[edit] External links

• The Glider: Proposal for a Hacker Emblem Contains more information on the Hacker Emblem proposal, including SVG and TeX sources and FAQs.
• "How To Become a Hacker" A document explaining the hacker culture.