You might encounter a few of them at the annual Def Con or Hope on Planet Earth conferences. The GNU project is an international effort that is being run by the Free Software Foundation. Be warned, real hackers have a twisted sense of humor. GNU is a recursive acronym. When the mere thought of a recursive acronym can throw you into gales of laughter, you will know you are turning into a real hacker.
Real hackers aspire to create software.
But to create serious, big time software. Much of the software these hacker demigods write is copylefted. But basically a copyleft says you have the right to reuse copylefted code in your own software, and even sell it, and make money on it, with only one condition. You must make the source code to your software available for anyone else who may wish to use it in writing their own software. If so, you may discover a warm welcome from the GNU folks and others in the free software movement.