Hackers are vital to openness and innovation in HE

"This hacker ethic can be seen among academics today who fight for open-access rights to peer-reviewed articles, and those teachers who form the growing open educational resources movement, dedicated to providing teaching and learning materials for free, worldwide public use. Not surprisingly, both the open-access and open-education movements owe much to Stallman and other pioneering hackers who developed the GPL and similar open-source licences. Unquestionably, the history of open access and open education is deeply indebted to the culture of hacking, yet we should not forget that, vice versa, the history of hacking is deeply rooted in the culture of the university...."