However, this story is just a facade. The whole issue around the word `hacker' is completely transparent to anybody who has adequate knowledge of the linguistics of marginalized social groups-- criminals, the insane, prostitutes, communities founded by runaway slaves, fringe religious cults, and the likes.

The language of a marginalized group is intentionally shaped by its members to have a particularly rich inventory of slang words and phrases (and sometimes other grammatical devices) not found in the speech of the social mainstream. In the simplest cases, for which the archetype is prison slangs, it's just a collection of words added on top of the mainstream language. In the most complex cases, the mainstream language is "relexified", i.e. nearly its whole vocabular is replaced; this is the case in, for instance, communities of descendants of escaped slaves in Brazil, where the men speak a secret language identical to Portuguese in grammar, but with all the words replaced by African words.

Marginal languages serve at least these three functions:

1. They identify and rank members of the group. They serve as a badge; not only using criminal slang identifies you as a member of the criminal subculture, but also your relative skill at it is an indicator of your seniority therein.
2. They serve in the construction of identity as a criminal, thus promote group cohesion. They are part of a shared lore which is valued by its users and contributes to their self-image and adherence to the group.
3. They make their speech incomprehensible to outsiders, thus allowing them to conceal their messages.

Now, let's consider the words `hacker' and `cracker'. These are clearly part of the shared lore of a marginalized group in our society. The word `hacker' dates a few decades, to the earliest day of the subculture that identifies with it. The term `cracker', according to the official `hacker' sources, was "coined ca. 1985 by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of hacker".

However, here is a key piece of the puzzle which Mr. Raymond leaves out, and his constituency for obvious reasons of self-interest doesn't bother to call him on. A search on the Lexis-Nexis journalistic database dates the first usage of the term `computer hacker' to April 13, 1983, in the `Information Bank Abstracts' section of the Wall Street Journal. The abstract, by Erik Larson, reads as follows:

Article on computer `hackers', originally one who knew computers inside out, now used to describe fiddlers who electronically invade other people's computers, usually just for challenge.

One thing is plainly evident from this quote. By the time the media started using the word `hacker', it already meant "computer criminal". Contrary to what Mr. Raymonds and his countless sheep-like followers want us to believe, the media did not misapply the word `hacker'. In the usage of hackers, the word already meant "computer criminal" when the media picked it up.

Why all the outrage from the hacker community? This is simple. Recall the functions of criminal language, as stated above. When `hacker' was not a mainstream word, it had a particular power: it signaled `computer criminal' only to those in the know about computer crime. However, as soon as the media desciphers the criminal code, the word loses that power. Now, when the criminal describes himself as a `hacker', anybody can tell that he has just confessed a crime (or at least the intent to commit one).

Thus the predictable reaction from the `hacker' community: public denial of the true meaning of the word, along with the coinage of `cracker'. The computer criminals are not the `hackers', but rather those other people, the `crackers'. The upstanding, nonhacker citizen takes their word for it, and starts looking for `crackers'. None to be found; who calls themselves a `cracker', anyway? The criminals still refer to their activity as `hacking', which they have convinced the outside world is a respectable activity.

We should not fall prey to this duplicity. Resist attempts by hackers to bleach the criminal content of their activity away from their self-selected name.

(To be continued...)