Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

(though not gender specific) called the Hacker's League. And he still believes thatCommunity Memory, once it gets on the network, will have an impact on theworld.Ken Williams is still chairman of Sierra On-Line. The company has had its highsand lows, but like its successful competitor Broderbund and unlike the defunctSirius, it is bigger than ever, employing around 700 people at its Oakhurstheadquarters. Sierra went public in 1992; Ken's holdings make him many times amillionaire. Sierra also has invested millions of dollars in an interactive computergame-playingnetwork; AT&T has purchased twenty percent of the venture.Roberta Williams is Sierra's most popular game designer, acclaimed for her King'sQuest series of 3-D graphic adventure games.Ken Williams thinks that there's little room for the old hacker spirit at Sierra. "Inthe early days, one person, John Harris, could do a project," Ken says. "Now, ourgames have fifty or more names in the credit. We don't do any products without atleast a million development budget. In King's Quest VI, there is a seven-hundredpagescript, read by over fifty professional actors. It was the single largest voicerecordingproject ever done in Hollywood."Ken Williams tells me that John Hams still lives in the Oakhurst area, operating asmall business selling software to generate display screens for cable televisionoperators. According to Williams, John Harris is still writing his software for thelong discontinued Atari 800 computer.As one might expect of the last true hacker, Richard Stallman has mostemphatically remained true to the ideals of the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab. Hiscompany, the Free Software Foundation, is, according to Wired, "the world's onlycharitable organization with the mission of developing free software." Stallman hasalso been an instrumental force in the League for Software Freedom, a groupreflecting his belief that proprietary software is a pox upon the digital landscape. In1991, his efforts came to the attention of those in charge of parceling out thecoveted McArthur Fellowship "genius grants." The last time I saw him, Stallmanwas organizing a demonstration against the Lotus Development Corporation. Hisprotest regarded their software patents. He believed, and still does, that informationshould be free.Steven Levy August 1993