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Eric S. Raymond

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Eric S. Raymond (FISL 6.0, Porto Alegre, Brazil)
For the villain from the animated television series Jem, see Eric Raymond (villain).

Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is a computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. His reputation within the hacker culture was established when he became the maintainer of the "Jargon File". After the 1997 publication of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", Raymond became for a number of years a high-profile representative of the open source movement.

Hacker

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1957, Raymond lived on three continents before settling in Pennsylvania in 1971.[1] Raymond's mild form of congenital cerebral palsy motivated him to pursue a future in computing;[2] his involvement with hacker culture began in 1976, and he contributed to his first free software project in the late 1980s. His primary contributions to open source software have been maintaining the fetchmail email client for a certain time, and gpsd. Other contributions have included Emacs editing modes and portions of libraries like GNU ncurses, giflib/libungif, and libpng. He also wrote CML2, a source code configuration system; while originally intended for the Linux kernel, it was rejected by kernel developers.[3] Raymond attributed this rejection to "kernel list politics".[4]

Raymond initially became known by hackers for his adoption of the Jargon File. Some of the changes made under his watch have been controversial; early critics accused Raymond of unfairly changing the file's focus to the Unix hacker culture instead of the older hacker cultures where the Jargon File originated. Raymond has responded by saying that the nature of hacking had changed and the Jargon File should report on hacker culture, and not attempt to enshrine it.[5] More recently, Raymond has been accused of adding terms to the Jargon File that appear to have been used primarily by himself, and of altering the file to reflect his own political views.[6]

Raymond is the author of a number of How-to documents and FAQs, many of which are included in the Linux Documentation Project corpus.[7] Raymond's 2003 book The Art of Unix Programming covers Unix history and culture, and modern user tools available for programming and accomplishing tasks in Unix.

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, published in 1997.[8] Raymond became a prominent voice in the open source movement and co-founded the Open Source Initiative in 1998. 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,[9] has accepted stock options from VA Software to provide credibility to the company and act as a hired "corporate conscience"[10] and has spoken in more than fifteen countries on six continents.

In his open source advocacy, Raymond refused to speculate on whether the "bazaar" development model could be applied to works such as books and music, not wanting to "weaken the winning argument for open-sourcing software by tying it to a potential loser".[11] Later, he said that it could not work for an encyclopedia;[12] he was particularly critical of Wikipedia, calling it a "disaster",[13] and raising concerns about the factual accuracy and neutrality of its article about him.[13]

Raymond has had a number of public disputes with other figures in the free software movement. He has rejected what he describes as the "very seductive" moral and ethical rhetoric of Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, asserting that this is "not because his principles are wrong, but because that kind of language ... simply does not persuade anybody."[14]

Raymond addressed some of his critics from the software development community in his 1999 essay "Take My Job, Please!",[15] 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.

Interests and politics

Other than his computing interests, Raymond is known to have strong interests in science fiction and firearms, is an enthusiastic amateur musician, and has a black belt in "Moo Do, an eclectic martial art based on Tae Kwon Do".[16] He is an advocate of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.[17] Raymond identifies himself religiously as a neopagan,[18] and is an initiate witch and coven leader.[19]

Raymond is a prolific writer of political and technical opinion pieces through his website and blog. Raymond is an avowed anarcho-capitalist and a supporter of the Libertarian Party. However, he supported the War on Iraq, and criticized the Libertarian party for perceived isolationism in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks;[20] he said that the Western world should embark on an "imperialist" military campaign to "civilize" the Muslim world. He acknowledged that some might call this plan "deliberate cultural genocide."[21]

Other controversial opinions he has proffered include that African-Americans are responsible for a disproportionate percentage of crimes because they have lower IQs,[22], and that "pederasty has never been a marked or unusual behavior among homosexuals, and even advocates of outright pedophilia are not shunned in the homosexual-activist community".[23]

Bibliography

  • 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 1-56592-724-9, October 1999; paperback ISBN 0-596-00108-8, 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 0-13-142901-9)

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Eric S. Raymond.

References

  1. ^ "Interview with Eric Raymond". Retrieved 2007-03-14.
  2. ^ Let my software go!, Salon.com
  3. ^ "CML2, ESR, & The LKML". KernelTrap. 2002-02-17.
  4. ^ McMillan, Rob. "Interview: Eric Raymond goes back to basics". IBM developerWorks.
  5. ^ Raymond, Eric. "Updating JARGON.TXT Is Not Bogus: An Apologia". Retrieved 2007-01-26.
  6. ^ "Need To Know 2003-06-06". Retrieved 2007-01-25.
  7. ^ "Eric Raymond's FAQ collection". Retrieved 2007-02-25.
  8. ^ Raymond, Eric S. "Release Early, Release Often". The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
  9. ^ Open Source Advocate Invited To Microsoft
  10. ^ Eric S. Raymond -- Surprised By Wealth, ESR hard times
  11. ^ Raymond, Eric S. (2000). "Afterword: Beyond Software?". Retrieved 2007-07-24.
  12. ^ "Wikipedia stand-off in search for online truth". FT.com. Retrieved 2007-1-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  13. ^ a b Schiff, Stacy (2006-07-24). "KNOW IT ALL: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?"". Retrieved 2007-16-01. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  14. ^ "Shut up and the Show Them The Code". Linux Today. 1999-07-28.
  15. ^ Take my job, please., Eric Raymond.
  16. ^ "Eric Steven Raymond's Curriculum Vitae".
  17. ^ "Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun".
  18. ^ Raymond, Eric S (1995-07-25). "Dancing With The Gods". Eric's Home Page. Individual. Retrieved September 14. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  19. ^ The Neopaganism FAQ
  20. ^ "Post-postmodern politics". Armed and Dangerous. 2002-11-06. Retrieved 2007-07-24. And, unfortunately, the Libertarian Party has courted self-destruction by choosing to respond to 9/11 with an isolationism every bit as vapid and mindless as the left's "No War for Oil!" chanting.
  21. ^ Eric Raymond's blog
  22. ^ "What good is IQ?". Armed and Dangerous. 2003-11-17. Retrieved 2007-07-24. In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes; can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color.
  23. ^ "The Elephant in the Bath-House". Armed and Dangerous. 2002-06-16. Retrieved 2007-07-24.
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