Richard Stallman in the early 80s coined the term ‘cracker’[1] to refer to those who breached computer security with a malevolent intent. But even after being vocal for the past 30 years, a ‘cracker’ seems non-existent, and a ‘hacker’ is frowned upon.

Our fellow hackers are dismayed at this, and have time and again tried to clarify the real meaning of a hacker.

“a "hacker" connotes mastery in the most literal sense: someone who can make a computer do what he wants—whether the computer wants to or not.”[2]  - Paul Graham

Stallman does not limit his definition to just Computer professionals, but to anyone who is “...exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness.”[3]

Both the definitions overlap in some sense. The one who has attained mastery has often done so, while exploring the limits of what is possible. So if you are exploring the limits of what content can do, you can be a content hacker. If you are exploring the limits of what music can do, you can be a music hacker.

And thus it saddens me and many like me that the word ‘hacker’ is associated with something wrong. 

Looking at this current scenario, we have decided to start this campaign. If the campaign is successful, we’ll send out mails to all the major print and electronic media companies and the publishing houses of the world. We will request them to write articles about our initiative, and we will try to convince them to use the word ‘hacker’ in a positive sense, and the word ‘cracker’ when they want to talk about someone who breaches computer security for a wrong purpose.

We cannot do this all alone, and we’d need your help in this. Let’s start this movement by signing the petition, and posting it on your Facebook, Twitter, Medium, and other forms of social media. Write articles about this, if you have to. Also, whenever you post anything about this campaign, add a hash tag #hackernotcracker to the message. Let the world of media and non-hackers hear about this from all over.

We’re preparing a list of media houses/companies who’ll be receiving this mail. If you have any suggestions, please let us know by sending an email on campaign@hackerrank.com. We'll update our list as per your suggestions.

Thank you.

References

[1] https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html#cracker

[2] http://paulgraham.com/gba.html

[3] https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html

Edit:

RFC that defines 'hacker' and 'cracker' as scientific terms:

[4] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1392