Liked a lot Nat Friedman’s answer to the question “How can I become a hacker?” that he and Miguel de Icaza get all the time during his talks and travels: just get the code, open it, improve something and send the patch to the mailing list.
In the answer, I just miss the social part of being a hacker, including the Hacker Ethic and the Hacker Culture. I don’t see a hacker as someone that changes code, but as someone seing changing code as a way of changing the world.
I guess this is another distinction between Free Software and Open Source supporters.