Hacking put to good use...

It irks me when I hear the term hacker in mostly negative ways, then a hacker does something like this and it remains me of the original sense of hacking. On the original days of computers, hackers came together to try to come with new ways to use what they had.

Most hackers continue to do this, sometimes doing things that could be at least be called dubious just to prove it can be done. The Xbox One gamepad is one example of a hacker coming with an use that some gamers wanted, but that Microsoft wasn't giving to them.

For me, that's an area where open source can be of help to hackers and hackers can give to open source. In many ways, if you allow hackers to adapt software and hardware openly to other uses and to let them contribute their hacks back to the community is one of the best ways to make open source projects better faster. And by having those hacks occurring openly, the risk of having any malicious side of it coming out of it to a minimum.

As with anything where people are involved, there will be some that will try to come with ways to hack in ways that are not beneficial. Yet, I don't think that those will be the norm. The nature of open source will help to keep it that way, since most of the people working on those hacks can contribute it to keep those hacks from bad use.

Hack in itself it's neutral. It's the people that do that hacking, who actually use it for good or for bad. Instead of making hacking an evil act, lets make it attractive to those who will make use of it for the good of community that will make use of the hack they make.

Pushing hackers, and the skills the make use of, aside as unwanted people we are set to lose of a lot of things that could benefit us enormously. We need them to work on the open, so that their work can benefit as much people as possible. Only by doing this, can we have a more rapid progress on as many fields as possible.

Hacking is a skill set that can go both ways, but when allow it to grow in an open space that pushes it to be used for the good of us all it can do wonders for all.