Eric S. Raymond

Eric S. Raymond

Raymond at Linucon 2005
Born December 4, 1957 (1957-12-04) (age 53)
Boston, Massachusetts
Residence Pennsylvania
Nationality US American
Other names ESR
Alma mater University of Pennsylvania[1]
Occupation Software developer, author
Website
http://www.catb.org/~esr/

Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is a computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. His name became known within the hacker culture when he picked up maintenance of the "Jargon File" in 1990. After the 1997 publication of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", Raymond became, for a number of years, an unofficial spokesman of the open source movement.[2]

Contents

Biography

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1957, Raymond lived in Venezuela before settling in Pennsylvania in 1971.[3] Raymond says his congenital cerebral palsy motivated him to chase a future in computing;[4] his involvement with hacker culture began in 1976, and he contributed to his first free and open source software project in the late 1980s. His primary contributions to open source software have been maintaining the fetchmail mail retrieval agent 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 contributes code and content to The Battle for Wesnoth.[5] He also wrote CML2, a source code configuration system; while originally intended for the Linux kernel, it was rejected by kernel developers.[6] Raymond attributed this rejection to "kernel list politics".[7]

Raymond is the author of a number of How-to documents and FAQs, many of which are included in the Linux Documentation Project corpus.[8] 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. Raymond has also been the editor of the Jargon File since he adopted it in 1990. Raymond has been the author of the included guide document for NetHack for several versions.[9]

In addition to his computing interests, and sometimes complementing them, Raymond has a strong interest in science fiction and its fandom,[10] is an active Libertarian,[11] and has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do;[12] he is also a neopagan,[13] a political anarchist,[14] and an advocate of the general right to possess and use firearms.[15] Raymond ceased blogging in June 2006, but resumed in June 2008, making reference to "a certain lawsuit now in court" as the cause for the hiatus.[16]

In June 2009 Raymond participated in the establishment of[17] the hacktivist website NedaNet,[18] founded in honor of Neda Soltan "to support the democratic revolution in Iran" via proxy servers, anonymizers, etc. He serves most prominently as the website's public contact,[19] and has in this capacity received on-line threats,[20] including one death threat which he claims he has reported to the FBI which the agency "is taking seriously".[21] Raymond refers to his current situation as "... living inside a cyberpunk novel. A libertarian cyberpunk novel."[22]

Open source

Raymond's models of how the open source community works were influenced[23] by an early draft of a paper[24] by Keith Henson describing religious fervor as an overstimulation of evolved responses to social status rewards. More colloquially, Raymond later coined the aphorism "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."[25] He credits Linus Torvalds with the inspiration for this quotation, which he dubs "Linus' Law". The quotation appears in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", published in 1997.[26] 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. Raymond has spoken in more than fifteen countries on six continents, including a lecture at Microsoft.[27]

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".[28]

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."[29]

In February 2005, Raymond stepped down as the president of the Open Source Initiative.

Raymond accepted stock options from VA Software to provide credibility to the company and act as a hired "corporate conscience".[30][31] He was granted 150,000 share options, which reached a value of $36 million on the day of VA's initial public offering,[30][32] equivalent to a current $47 million after inflation. His shares vested over a four year period contingent on him staying on the board. Twelve months later, following the Internet bubble burst, shares of VA had dropped from a high of $242.87 to $14.[33]

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. ↑ Raymond, Eric S. (2003-01-29). "Resume of Eric Steven Raymond". http://catb.org/~esr/resume.html. Retrieved 2009-11-23. 
  2. ↑ "Hackers cut off SCO Web site". 2003-08-25. http://news.cnet.com/2100-1002-5067743.html. Retrieved 2009-08-22. 
  3. ↑ "Man Against the FUD". http://web.archive.org/web/20071013123601/http://laweekly.com/art+books/cyber/man-against-the-fud/6614/. Retrieved 2008-07-07. 
  4. ↑ Leonard, Andrew (April 1998). "Let my software go!". Salon.com (San Francisco, California: Salon Media Group). http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/04/cov_14feature.html. Retrieved 2009-11-23. 
  5. ↑ "People at Gna!: Eric S. Raymond Profile". Gna.org. http://gna.org/users/esr. Retrieved 2009-11-23. 
  6. ↑ "CML2, ESR, & The LKML". KernelTrap. 2002-02-17. http://kerneltrap.org/node/17. 
  7. ↑ McMillan, Rob. "Interview: Eric Raymond goes back to basics". IBM developerWorks. http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-ivesr.html?ca=dgr-lnxw09EricRaymond. 
  8. ↑ "Eric Raymond's FAQ collection". http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/. Retrieved 2007-02-25. 
  9. ↑ Raymond, Eric S. (2003-12-08). "A Guide to the Mazes of Menace (Guidebook of Nethack)". NetHack.org. http://www.nethack.org/v343/Guidebook.html. Retrieved 2008-12-15. 
  10. ↑ Raymond, Eric Steven. Conventions at Light Speed: What Hackers Can Learn From SF Fandom 1998, 2000, 2001
  11. ↑ http://www.catb.org/~esr/netfreedom/
  12. ↑ Leibovich, Mark (1998-12-03). "U.S. v. Microsoft Special Report: The Spreading Grass-Roots Threat to Microsoft". The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.): p. A01. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/stories/1998/raymond120398.htm. Retrieved 2008-07-08. 
  13. ↑ Raymond, Eric S. (1995-07-25). "Dancing With The Gods". http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/dancing.html. Retrieved 2005-09-14. 
  14. ↑ Raymond, Eric S. (1999-12-18). "Why I Am An Anarchist". http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/anarchist.html. Retrieved 2009-12-04. 
  15. ↑ Raymond, Eric S. (2006-06-24). "Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun: What Bearing Weapons Teaches About the Good Life". http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/gun-ethics.html. Retrieved 2009-12-04. 
  16. ↑ Raymond, Eric S. (2008-06-26). "I’m unstealthing". Armed and Dangerous. http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=295. Retrieved 2008-09-17. 
  17. ↑ http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1096
  18. ↑ Steinberg, Julie (2009-06-22). "Neda Agha Soltan's Death Inspires New Site". The Wall Street Journal. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/06/22/neda-soltanis-death-inspires-nedanet/. 
  19. ↑ Steinberg, Julie "Neda Agha Soltan’s Death Inspires New Site" WSJ Blogs: Digits:Technology News and Insights. June 22, 2009
  20. ↑ http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1096#comment-237475
  21. ↑ http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1119#comments
  22. ↑ Etheridge, Eric. "Morning Skim: What Now for Iran’s Protestors?" New York Times Opinion: The Opinionator: A Gathering of Opinion From Around the Web. June 22, 2009
  23. ↑ http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.h.keith.henson
  24. ↑ http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/cults.html
  25. ↑ Gruen, Nicholas (2009-01-29). "Reduce the bugbears with some beta-tested policies". theage.com.au. http://business.theage.com.au/business/reduce-the-bugbears-with-some-betatested-policies-20090128-7s1y.html. Retrieved 2009-02-05. 
  26. ↑ Raymond, Eric S. (2002-08-15). "Release Early, Release Often". The Cathedral and the Bazaar. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html. Retrieved 2007-02-25. 
  27. ↑ Open Source Advocate Invited To Microsoft
  28. ↑ Raymond, Eric S. (2000). "Afterword: Beyond Software?". http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/afterword/. Retrieved 2007-07-24. 
  29. ↑ Raymond, Eric S. (1999-07-28). "Shut Up And Show Them The Code". Linux Today. http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-06-28-023-10-NW-SM. Retrieved 2009-11-23. 
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Raymond, Eric S. (1999-12-10). "Eric S. Raymond -- Surprised By Wealth". Linux Today. http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-12-10-001-05-NW-LF. Retrieved 2009-11-23. 
  31. ↑ ESR hard times
  32. ↑ "Open Source Rich Opens Mouth". http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1999/12/33023. 
  33. ↑ "VA Stock Price History". http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=LNUX&a=11&b=9&c=1999&d=2&e=14&f=2008&g=d&z=66&y=1782. 

External links

Key figures in the history of free software
Rick Adams · Eric Allman · Brian Behlendorf · Keith Bostic · Alan Cox · Matthias Ettrich · Miguel de Icaza · Theo de Raadt · Jim Gettys · John Gilmore · Jon "maddog" Hall · Jordan Hubbard · Lynne and William Jolitz · Lawrence Lessig · Marshall Kirk McKusick · Eben Moglen · Ian Murdock · Tim O'Reilly · Keith Packard · Brian Paul · Bruce Perens · Eric S. Raymond · Bob Scheifler · Mark Shuttleworth · Richard Stallman · Linus Torvalds · Theodore Ts'o · Andrew Tridgell · Guido van Rossum · Rasmus Lerdorf · Larry Wall