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.

Criticism

Raymond initially became famous for his adoption of the Jargon File. Since then, many hackers have become dissatisfied by his centralized control over submissions to the File, the allegedly questionable additions and edits he has made, and the removal of certain terms on the grounds of being dated (unusual in historical dictionary projects). He has also been criticised for using the Jargon File as a vehicle for promoting his own political and social opinions. Particular instances that attracted much attention were the addition of tendentious pro-Iraq War and pro-gun ownership entries http://slashdot.org/articles/03/06/08/1534249.shtml.

Related Topics:
Jargon File

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Critics accuse Raymond of hijacking the free software movement for the sake of self-promotion. It is argued that he has often worked to undermine other leaders/speakers of the 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. He agreed to lecture at Microsoft http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990615S0032, also increasing the friction, and is also said to have accepted stock options in return for giving VA Software credibility as their hired "moral compass". http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-12-10-001-05-NW-LF http://lwn.net/2001/0222/a/esr-hard-times.php3

Related Topics:
Free software movement - Richard Stallman - Free Software Foundation - Microsoft - VA Software

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When an apparently unsuspecting Microsoft recruiter (probably referred by someone as a joke) contacted Raymond in September 2005 "as someone who could potentially be a contributor at Microsoft", his response, incorrectly treating this as an actual offer of employment, was typical: "What were you going to do with the rest of your afternoon, offer jobs to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds? Or were you going to stick to something easier, like talking Pope Benedict XVI into presiding at a Satanist orgy?" This arguably brash assumption that he should be classed with Torvalds and Stallman is typical of what many of Raymond's critics find disagreeable.

Related Topics:
Microsoft - Richard Stallman - Linus Torvalds - Pope Benedict XVI

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There has also been some acrimony between Raymond and Linux kernel developers, after the Linux project's refusal to incorporate CML2, an alternative kernel configuration system developed by Raymond. http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/340 http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/17 http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-ivesr.html?ca=dgr-lnxw09EricRaymond

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Furthermore, his temper has also caused some tension between himself and other Open Source advocates, most famously Bruce Perens. Perens made public a private threatening email he received from Raymond on the Debian mailing lists, citing concerns for his personal safety. http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/1999/debian-user-199904/msg00623.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/debian-devel-199904/msg00205.html

Related Topics:
Bruce Perens - Debian

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Raymond's claim to being a "Core Linux Developer" has also drawn criticism on the ground that he has never had any code accepted into the Linux kernel, and that the extent of his open source code contributions are relatively minor and arguably unimportant, amounting to little more than portions of fetchmail, Ncurses, and a few Emacs editing modes. This lack of credentials led to a derisive reception http://linuxtoday.com/stories/7196.html#talkback_area of the essay "Shut Up And Show Them The Code", levelled at Richard Stallman, the original author of, among other things, Emacs, GCC, GDB, and GNU Make, some of the most important pieces and widely used pieces of software in the world.

Related Topics:
Richard Stallman - Emacs - GCC - GDB - GNU Make

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Raymond addresses some of these criticisms in his essay "Take My Job, Please!" http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/take-my-job-please.html, where he argues that if anyone is qualified and willing to take his job and present the case for open source to the world, he would "back them to the hilt".

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During the summer of 2003, Raymond expounded his opinions about politics, racial IQ differences http://www.ibiblio.org/esrblog/index.php?m=200311#post-129, terrorism and the Iraq war on his weblog (http://armedndangerous.blogspot.com/2002_09_15_armedndangerous_archive.html#81815163 for instance), provoking much heated criticism.

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