Zuckerberg and Stallman: Two sides of the same coin?

So suggests Steven Levy, author of Hackers

Fortune's Andy Greenberg interviewed Hackers author Steven Levy to mark the 25^th anniversary of Levy's classic book. In that Q&A, Levy offers an eye-opener of a comparison to help frame the current state of "hacker" ethos.  An excerpt:

Levy: You see start-ups bragging again that they have the hacker spirit. In the new afterward for the book, for instance, I wrote about how (Mark) Zuckerberg told me that Facebook was a hacker's company.

Q: Do you really think that Zuckerberg believes in tenets of the hacker ethic, like "information wants to be free"?

Levy: In a crazy way, he's arguing that people should share everything. He's like the early hackers at MIT such as [open source advocate Richard] Stallman who fought for people not to have passwords or secrets. Of course Zuckerberg has a commercial interest in this. But he's basically saying that it's better for society if people share things.

I'd love to hear what Stallman thinks of that comparison.

Heck, I'd love to hear what Zuckerberg thinks.

• Facebook
• Free Software Foundation
• GNU Project
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Richard Stallman