Is this hacker related at all or is it that hackers end up with (loads of) this sort of information more often?
If I had in my possession delicate information about government, military, or public sector misbehaviour I would need a really, really good reason to keep it secret. And I would assume that most people would face the same dilemma, regardless of hackerdom.
They might, as well as many hackers, choose to do so because they want to keep their jobs and feed their kids but they still couldn't get over the issue. Young people are more likely to leak because they have less to lose.
There are Stallmans of non-hacker origin, too. These are people who see a problem in society and set out to fix it. Civil rights groups, civil liberties groups, charity organizations. Stallman just happened to be a hacker so what he saw was a social problem in his own domain.
I do recognize the libertarian sentiment among hackers and I subscribe to that myself, too. Just wondering if it's really hacker specific.
If I had in my possession delicate information about government, military, or public sector misbehaviour I would need a really, really good reason to keep it secret. And I would assume that most people would face the same dilemma, regardless of hackerdom.
They might, as well as many hackers, choose to do so because they want to keep their jobs and feed their kids but they still couldn't get over the issue. Young people are more likely to leak because they have less to lose.
There are Stallmans of non-hacker origin, too. These are people who see a problem in society and set out to fix it. Civil rights groups, civil liberties groups, charity organizations. Stallman just happened to be a hacker so what he saw was a social problem in his own domain.
I do recognize the libertarian sentiment among hackers and I subscribe to that myself, too. Just wondering if it's really hacker specific.