The author asserts that YC's capitalist purpose it at odds with the hacker ethos of free information.<p>I would argue that YC is investing in products, not ideas. It has been stated many times that ideas are not valuable in themselves; their value is derived from the execution of an idea.<p>Furthermore, building a product around some open technology provides a monetary means to improve the technology. If you look through the list of contributors to many prominent open source components I am certain that you will find people who contributed because they were building a product that used the technology.
To me a "hacker" is someone too busy building things to get caught up in the semantics of why and how. Richard Stallman , for example, is no longer a hacker. He's too caught up in the "why" of open source software.<p>"The money problem" as pg calls it, is a significant barrier to being a hacker. Solve the money problem and you can work on whatever problems you want without worrying about why and how.<p>YCombinator seems to be aptly named. It is an attempt to solve the problem of solving problems. That is why it is the ultimate hack.