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" (also known as "The New Hacker's Dictionary"). Though the Jargon File established his original reputation as a historian/anthropologist of the hacker culture, after 1997 he became a leading figure in the open source movement, and is today one of its most famous (and controversial) characters.

Achievements

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1957, Raymond lived on three continents before settling in Pennsylvania in 1971. His involvement with hacker culture began in 1976 and he contributed to his first open source project in 1982. Since then, his open source software development activities have included maintaining the fetchmail email client, contributing editing modes to the EMACS editor and co-writing portions of the GNU ncurses library.

Related Topics:
Boston, Massachusetts - 1957 - Pennsylvania - 1971 - 1976 - Open source - 1982 - Fetchmail - EMACS - GNU ncurses

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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 mainstream source for the quotation is his 1999 book ', Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly & Associates; but his website archives the earliest source (1997), originally distributed freely on the Internet. "Cathedral" is generally considered to be his most important work. ESR is also a prolific publisher of essays and opinion pieces, many of which are political in nature, through his website and blog.

Related Topics:
Aphorism - Linus Torvalds - Linus's law - 1999 - 1997

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After 1997 Raymond became a prominent voice in the open source movement and was one of the founders of the Open Source Initiative. He also took on the self-appointed role of ambassador of open source to the press, business and mainstream culture. He is a gifted speaker and has taken his road show to more than fifteen countries on six continents. He is routinely quoted in the mainstream press, and as of 2003 has probably achieved more public visibility than almost any other open source advocate.

Related Topics:
Open Source Initiative - Open source - 2003

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Raymond and his supporters have credited his tactics with a number of remarkable successes, beginning with the release of the Mozilla (then Netscape) source code in 1998, and he is widely credited with having taken the open source mission to Wall Street more effectively than earlier advocates.

Related Topics:
Mozilla - Netscape - 1998 - Wall Street

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