The Story of The Hacker Foundation

The Hacker Foundation began in 2003 as an attempt to see if the USA tax laws could be put to the benefit of the Hacker Community. The founders wanted independent hacker researchers to have access to the same tax benefits and funding that academics and corporate-backed research organizations have. The foundation also wanted to assist hackers with marketing, organizing and project management tools. The foundation was recognized as a non-profit foundation by the USA Federal and State of California taxation authorities in 2005. Now, two years later, it seems that the feds were more convinced about the idea than hackers in the USA!

With directors, projects and resources spread throughout the USA, Jake Applebaum (member of the HF Board of Directors) and Nick Farr (a/k/a NFF) will lead a four part discussion on the Hacker Foundation in the USA. Part One will focus on the origins of the Hacker Foundation at Defcons 8 and 9 and the original idea of “Hackers Without Borders”, an organization loosely pattered after the international medical relief organization Doctors Without Borders. Part Two will focus on the birth of the Hacker Foundation in the State of California and the fight to achieve recognition from government agencies. We will discuss how our correspondence with the feds and other hackers brought about the evolution of the original idea to the foundation's present form. Part Three will focus on our early projects and what we have learned attempting to organize Hackers and provide services to Hacker projects in the USA. This part will focus on the inherent difficulties in organizing hackers in the USA and some of the ideological differences among hackers in the USA that make organizing difficult. We'll also cover our efforts to provide laptops to Ugandan non-profit organizations which were cut short by the Ugandan government. Our closing will focus on where HF is today and where we plan to go into the future. We will suggest some methods to internationalize the foundation, include a brief discussion on the Metasploit fund, preview the services we currently offer and discuss our fundraising strategies.