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Eric S. Raymond

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Eric S. Raymond
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Eric S. Raymond

Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is the author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and the present maintainer of the "Jargon File" (the printed version also known as "The New Hacker's Dictionary"). Though the Jargon File established his original reputation within hacker culture, after 1997 he became a figure in the open source movement, and is today one of its most recognized and controversial characters.

Raymond is an avowed anarcho-capitalist and supporter of the Libertarian Party. He is known to have strong interests in science fiction and firearms, is an enthusiastic amateur musician, and claims to have a black belt in taekwondo. He is an advocate of gun rights (justifying them on his interpretation of the Second Amendment[1]) and supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Raymond has a mild form of congenital cerebral palsy, a condition which motivated him to pursue a future in computing.[2]

Raymond identifies himself religiously as a neopagan, and is an initiate witch and coven leader.[3]

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Hacker

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1957, Raymond lived on three continents before settling in Pennsylvania in 1971.[citation needed] His involvement with hacker culture began in 1976 and he contributed to his first open source software project in 1982. Since then, his primary contribution to open source software has been maintaining the fetchmail email client. Minor contributions have included Emacs editing modes and portions of libraries like GNU ncurses, giflib/libungif, and libpng. He has also written a number of How-to documents that are now included in the Linux Documentation Project corpus. Raymond's public claim to be a "Core Linux Developer" has been disputed since he has never had code accepted into the Linux kernel. His sole attempt to contribute to Linux (the CML2 configuration system) was rejected by Linux kernel developers.[4]

Raymond initially became known by hackers for his adoption of the Jargon File. Some have become dissatisfied with the resulting character of the work due to the inclusion of material invented by Raymond, the change of focus to Unix hacker culture or the reflection his own political views in the work. Objectors to Raymond's stewardship are of the opinion that the Jargon File should be an impartial record of "hacker culture".[5]

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Open source

Raymond coined the aphorism "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." He credits Linus Torvalds with the inspiration for this quotation, which he dubs "Linus's law". The quotation appears in The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly & Associates.[1] In 1997, Raymond became a prominent voice in the open source movement and was a co-founder of the Open Source Initiative. He also took on the self-appointed role of ambassador of open source to the press, business and public. The release of the Mozilla (then Netscape) source code in 1998 was an early accomplishment. He has agreed to lecture at Microsoft,[6] has accepted stock options from VA Software to provide credibility to the company and act as a hired "corporate conscience"[7] and has spoken in more than fifteen countries on six continents.

Raymond has had a number of public disputes with other figures in the free software movement. His disagreement with Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation's views on the ethics of free software in favour of a more market-driven stance has exacerbated some pre-existing tensions in the community. In 1999, Raymond published an article entitled "Shut Up And Show Them The Code".[8] The article criticized Stallman over tactics to promote free and open source software, implying he spent too much time proselytizing and not producing code.

Raymond addressed some of his critics from the software development community in his 1999 essay "Take My Job, Please!" [9], stating that he was willing to "back to the hilt" anyone qualified and willing to take his job and present the case for open source to the world. In February 2005, Raymond stepped down as the president of the Open Source Initiative.

Eric S. Raymond (One Magazine photo shoot)
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Eric S. Raymond (One Magazine photo shoot)
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Commentator

Raymond is a prolific writer of political and technical opinion pieces through his website and blog. Since the spring of 2002, Raymond has used his web log to promote his views on politics, race and the Iraq war. Controversial opinions he has proffered include that African-Americans are responsible for a disproportionate percentage of crimes because they have lower IQs [10]; and that the Western world should embark on an "imperialist" military campaign to "civilize" the Islamic world and eliminate its tendency for jihad through "military defeat, Western occupation, and a forced restructuring of society" because of the risk of nuclear terrorism after the September 11 attacks; he acknowledged that some might call this plan "deliberate cultural genocide."[11]

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Books by Raymond

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References

  1. ^ Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun.
  2. ^ Let my software go!, Salon.com
  3. ^ The Neopaganism FAQ
  4. ^ Linux: CML2, ESR & The LKML.
  5. ^ ESR Recasts Jargon File in Own Image. Slashdot.org.
  6. ^ Open Source Advocate Invited To Microsoft
  7. ^ Eric S. Raymond -- Surprised By Wealth, ESR hard times
  8. ^ Shut up and show them the code
  9. ^ Take my job, please., Eric Raymond.
  10. ^ Eric Raymond's blog
  11. ^ Eric Raymond's blog
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See also

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External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Key figures of FOSS history

Keith Bostic - Alan Cox - Miguel de Icaza - Theo de Raadt - John Gilmore - Lawrence Lessig - Eben Moglen - Tim O'Reilly - Brian Paul - Bruce Perens - Eric S. Raymond - Richard Stallman - Linus Torvalds - Andrew Tridgell - Guido van Rossum - Larry Wall
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