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
neolibertarian. 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) 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.
[Let my software go!, Salon.com]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 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.
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".
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,
[Open Source Advocate Invited To Microsoft] has accepted stock options from
VA Software to provide credibility to the company and act as a hired "corporate conscience"
[Eric S. Raymond -- Surprised By Wealth, ESR hard times] 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".
[Shut up and show them the code] 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!"
[Take my job, please., Eric Raymond.], 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) |
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
[Eric Raymond's blog]; 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."
[Eric Raymond's blog]* The New Hacker's Dictionary (editor) (MIT Press, paperback ISBN 0-262-68092-0, cloth ISBN 0-262-18178-9) — printed version of the
Jargon file* The Cathedral and the Bazaar (O'Reilly; hardcover ISBN 1565927249, October 1999; paperback ISBN 0596001088, January 2001) — includes "
The Cathedral and the Bazaar", "
Homesteading the Noosphere", "The Magic Cauldron" and "Revenge of the Hackers"
*
The Art of Unix Programming (Addison-Wesley, October 2003; paperback ISBN 0131429019)
*
Eric Raymond's home page and
weblog**
Frequently Asked Questions that are maintained by Raymond
**
The Jargon File, maintained by Raymond
*
Free ebook of Eric S. Raymond at
Project Gutenberg*
A Second Look at the Cathedral and Bazaar by Nikolai Bezroukov (First Monday)*
Interview with ESR in
EuroHacker Magazine where he talks about guns and politics.
*
Attempt to hire Eric E-mail from Microsoft, with Eric's response
*
The User Friendly webcomic issue with Eric S. Raymond.
