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# Jargon File

Jargon File (also Hacker's Dictionary) is a computer hacker dictionary/compendium that's been collaboratively written and updated by a number of prominent hackers, such as Richard Stallman and Erik S Raymond, since 1970. It is a chiefly important part of hacker culture and has also partly inspired this very wiki.

{ A similar but smaller encyclopedia is at https://www.erzo.org/shannon/writing/csua/encyclopedia.html (originally an encyclopedia at soda.csua.berkeley.edu). ~drummyfish }

The work informally states it's in the public domain and some have successfully published it commercially, although there is no standard waiver or license -- maybe because such waivers didn't really exist at the time it was started -- and so we have to suppose it is NOT formally free as in freedom. Nevertheless it is freely accessible e.g. at Project Gutenberg and no one will bother you if you share it around... we just wouldn't recommend treating it as true public domain.

It is fairly nicely written with high amount of humor and good old political incorrectness, you can for example successfully find the definition of terms such as rape and clit mouse. Some other nice terms include smoke emitting diode (broken diode), notwork (non-functioning network), Internet Exploiter, binary four (giving a finger in binary), homosexual adapter, Kamikaze packet or Maggotbox (Macintosh). At the beginning the book gives some theory about how the hacker terms are formed (overgeneralization, comparatives etc.).

## See Also

- GNU Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- encyclopedia

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