Probably the most famous
contemporary Finnish philosopher Pekka Himanen has written a book titled "The Hacker Ethic". Just to mention that the preface is written by
Linus Torvalds and the epilogue by
Manuel Castells.
To summarize the book briefly, Himanen represents hacker ethic much in the same spirit as Harry writes about it but Himanen pays a lot attention to the question if hacker ethic has replaced protestant work ethic (Max Weber) in the information society. Himanen comes into conclusion that the answer is positive: People want to work because it's their hobby too; or even more, an obsession. They don't count hours working day and night. Some amount of this work is done also without profit as a driving force.
It's quite easy to criticize Himanen that he generalizes hacker ethic to cover the types of work where's no room for that kind of ethic. It's impossible to think about a cashier in Walmart to have such an ambition on eir work. A McJob is just a duty, nothing else. It doesn't follow you home. To conclude, hacker ethic is the regime of the well-off.