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Eric S. Raymond

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

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 the right to bear arms (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]

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 free software project in the late 1980s. Minor contributions have included Emacs editing modes and portions of libraries like GNU ncurses, giflib/libungif, and libpng. Since then, his primary contributions to open source software has been maintaining the fetchmail email client, and gpsd. 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 only known contribution to the kernel (the CML2 configuration system) was rejected by 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 of 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]

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.

He joined Freespire Leadership Team on September 27, 2006.


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 whether African-Americans are responsible for a disproportionate percentage of crimes because they have lower IQs,

"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." [10]

He has also stated that the Western world should embark on an "imperialist" military campaign to "civilize" the Muslim world and eliminate what he claims is 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]

Books by Raymond

  • 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)

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. ^ Blog entry: What good is IQ?
  11. ^ Eric Raymond's blog
  • 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)
  • Revolution OS, 2001 Linux documentary with Eric S. Raymond on VHS/DVD

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Eric S. Raymond.

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