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ESR Recasts Jargon File in Own Image
don.g writes "As reported by NTK, ESR appears to have embarked apon the process of recasting the Jargon File in his own image, adding terms like "Aunt Tillie" and "GhandiCon" that he dreamt up and seemingly no-one else uses, and various terms from (of all places) the warblogging community, where he is active. He's also updated the "Hacker Politics" page to be more closely aligned with his own views."
The guy's an egomaniac, both online and off; if he's the maintainer of a project, he's god of the project. Whoever handed that one off to him is to blame, not ESR himself, because it's not like he's gone through some horrible, recent metamorphosis. :)
What is wrong with adding phrases from the warbloggers and what is with singling that out as something "bad" (of all places)? Especially since that is an area where he is familiar.
A better objection, or better phrasing, would be the non-admittance of other phrases from other collectives. It sounds so juch more inclusive that way, much less of that pot-kettle business you know.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Somebody should fork this project now.
Or, rather, "attacking the dictionary".
If the gang at NTK are so wound up about this, there is a simple solution - create a fork of the Jargon File (and maintain it, themselves). Quoting from the introduction:
So ... they have a choice between whining about what ESR has done, or doing something about it, and they chose to whine.
Heh. I guess I'm whining about them whining about ESR. Pot. Kettle. Oopsie.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
Does anyone else find it thoughtless and ungrateful to criticize one of the communities greatest single person assets because the tremendous efforts he puts forth FOR FREE are colored by his personal experiences?
No. I'm sick of people insisting that someone wasn't paid for their time then somehow they should be immune from criticism from whatever they do with that time. It's idiotic.
He has decided to appoint himself voice of the hacker movement. When he starts trying to distort the truth to feed his own ego and his simple-minded politics, then why the hell shouldn't he be criticized?
Finally (and not included in the changelogs), Eric has tweaked the Hacker Politics page, from its previous description as "vaguely liberal-moderate" to "moderate-to-neoconservative (hackers too were affected by the collapse of socialism)". Go tell that to the Kuro5hinners, Eric.
Unless he's been holding surveys, the claims made for politics (both past and current) are impossible to verify. My guess is that the original statement reflected the people he associated with, and the current one does as well. (And if he's active in "warblogging", the people he hangs out with are probably conservative) Unless someone puts together a survey and figures out how to administer it to a representative cross section of the community, we won't have enough statistical data to back up any claim.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Fork.
______
Like any public domain or copyleft project, it doesn't really matter what kind of job the maintainer does with the Jargon File, since alternate versions may be created effortlessly. ESR should be free to do whatever he likes with the thing, even if it's a bit silly. And since ESR isn't bothering anymore to host the definitive version himself, and hasn't for like a year or something, and 90% of the jargon file mirrors found on google are old versions anyway, it isn't like a forking would even be noticed.
I read the article after writing this comment and noticed NTK kind of makes this point themselves, but I think it's worth reiterating. Esp. since no one reads the article around here.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
That's why I treasure my original copy of the GLS-edited Hacker's Dictionary...
ME TOO!
Seriously. I found "The Hacker's Dictionary" in a bookstore in Ketchikan, Alaska, in 1984. Until then, I felt as if I was the only geek in the world. After that, I realized I was the only geek in Alaska, and there was a real world Out There.
If these allegations are true, and ESR is allowing editorial power to overcome the editor's responsibility to accurately reflect hacker culture, then this is a Very Bad Day for our collective family.
I propose a new rule for the editor of the Jargon File: the editor cannot contribute entries, and instead is relegated to the role of researching and selecting entries, and possibly editing them for language and content (rather like TNT does to movies).
However, as others have pointed out, the Jargon File is ESR's baby. If Guy L. Steele trusted him, I guess we have very little to say. The most we could do would be to fork the Jargon File and create a project called "The Hacker's Dictionary," with CVS access, an XML schema, etc.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Yes, the sex tips for geeks was bested only by his "I am now very rich" publication after VA IPO'd (then later caldera'd).
Unfortunately, Betrand Meyer is probably one of the few people *more* bombastic and annoying than ESR. Really, there is nothing of interest in Meyer's bogus ad hominem attack against ESR. I don't like guns either, but what in the hell does that have to do with software?
And the whole "Tartuffe" attack against RMS was just sickening. Does anyone have any evidence that RMS is *not* sincere? Just because a famous French play showed that some noble-seeming people are hypocrites, doesn't mean that all are hypocrites.
and
You can keep the personal attacks...I don't buy them because they seem to spring from either long-held grudges or unsubstantiated claims against Eric's character.
What bothers me is the apparent willingness of this community to attack a person that has done a lot to bring us all here in the first place. If you don't like ESR's version of the jargon file, feel free to fork your own, or email ESR with your specific complaints and work it out.
I'm not disappointed that Taco posted this story because it's not a bad idea to question those we consider leaders in this loose society that is the FOSS community...but I'm surprised and a bit disappointed at how quickly we turn into a bunch of sharks willing to devour each other. The tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theory part of my brain thinks that any proprietary-software-funded trolls have certainly earned their money in this thread.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
"Gandhicon" may not be a word in common use, but it has a lot of nice features. Why should WSR not be able to use his position of influence on hacker vocabulary to expose neologisms he likes?
Take everything he says with a grain of salt. Hell, take everything anyone says with a grain of salt. (Except maybe Linus himself. All hail Linus.)
Raymond says a lot of silly things and a lot of interesting things. Do you think the right way to respond to this is to ask him to shut up? The cost of silly things is small compared to the benefit of interesting things. Raymond easily manages a high enough ratio that it's worth paying attention to him.
mt
At most 13% of all uses references Eric Raymond.
That would be a good point if all uses of words were contained in Google. I mean, really, just sit back and think of how many strange phrases ('tard, pwn, derf, etc.) that NEVER leave verbal speech, IRC channels, and if you're one of those Windows jack-offs (no offense), Battle.net. Would you ever make a webpage with that language? Hell, even "brb", in all its widespread use, has only 216,000 hits, many of which are for labor organizations and the Biometric Research Branch and such. I think I'VE used "brb" more times than that.
Point is, most hacker jargon won't be found in an HTML page, anxiously awaiting Google webcrawlers to find it. The goal of the jargon file is to define words that most likely couldn't be found anywhere else. The whole point of it is that when you hear some arcane word in IRC, and you search google, and you go "I can't find this definition for this damn word!", the jargon file has you covered. At the same time, jargon that is in large webpage use may be a rarity in actual speech. Google just doesn't answer the question.
I would not grant them immunity either.
/. that would be news, and worth reading.
I take issue with people who look the gift horse in the mouth, and greater issue with those who snivel incessantly that their perspective on something was somehow "slighted" by the fact that it's different from that of one who took the time to write it down.
If someone were to produce a diff of the jargon file and found that 10 of the last hundred entries ESR added (or modified) were "bent" toward his perspective and point out how they were inaccurate and send it off to ESR, and publish it on
Simply combing through the changes to find things to bitch about may get you seat on the Jerry Springer show, but it isn't remotely objective or helpful.
If you'd like to argue the issues, then please do so.
Please provide us in 77 words or fewer, a better definition of hacker politics than the one ESR posted.
What you may find incomprehensible is that if you succeed, odds are ESR will gladly add it, merge it, or even replace his with yours. I wonder, if he did so, if you'd still maintain that he's being egotistical, or whether you'd have time to do so after reading all the flamemail from the pink bottomed whiners sitting around in their SpiderMan Underoos misdirecting their pre-teen angst.
I beg to differ with you. I think the politics crap is totally off mark. I think a better answer is that political opinion is not tied to hacking. I have met many "leftist" hackers, and many "rightist" hackers, but ESR is clearly pushing his crazy political views into the description.
if you would like evidence of his crazy views just watch "Revolution OS" (I think thats the title) and wit for the scene wear the ask him about the Free Software / COmmunist connection. The man gets rabidly defensive, yet fails to make a SINGLE political statement or reason.
For those too busy to read the article summary above, here's a summary summary:
Seriously, if the editors of Slashdot bitching about someone else's editorial bias isn't an example of the pot calling the kettle black, then I have no idea what is.
What's an Idiotarian? To my way of interpreting this writing, it's basically anyone ESR or his adherents disgrees with. At first, an idiotarian is anyone who supports terrorists and tyrants, a/k/a the American Left. However, the screed goes on to assail the American Right, who are most often in support of eliminating terrorists and tyrants. So, yeah, anyone who doesn't subscribe to ESR's version of militant libertarianism is an idiotarian.
A lot of people here were really beating up on ESR; I decided to my own checking and decided that the guy is veering dangerously close to Unabomber material. Guns, anarchy, manifestos against both political sides, whatever. Time to get a cabin in the woods and issue forth open-source decrees. Just don't wrap 'em around pipe bombs and everything will be okay.
The article makes a specific claim about ESR's recent changes to the Jargon file, a document that he himself maintains, and I will comment on those claims and attempt to explain why I do not believe the claim has merit with respect to the "indications" (evidence) the article suggests.
It claims he added terms he dreamed up that no-one else seems to use as evidenced by search engine use and cited as examples: "Aunt Tillie", "GhandiCon".
He added terms from the warblogging community where he is active.
He aligned the Hacker Politics page to his own views.
Firstly The article links to a site that begins with: "*the* weekly high-tech sarcastic update for the uk>" This should start the warning bell, "The text is probably intended to be humor"
As to the particular instances, individually:
[1] Is perhaps true, that is if ESR goes by many aliases, as there seem to be multiple people using these terms, however:
[2] I expect it to be true that he writes definitions mostly for words he is the most familiar with. This doesn't mean he's rewriting The Jargon File in his own image: it means that he is expanding it to include terms that he knows about and is likely to use, he is not entering junk bytes, he's entering informed bytes.
I for one expect that he would focus on writing the terms that he is most familiar with and hoping that others will take the effort to contribute defintions for terms that they are more familiar with and feel are jargon, so he doesn't end up writing definitions for jargon used by groups he's less involved with. Definitions that could turn out to be less informative or less accurate.
Moreover, adding definitions is not rewriting anything, let alone The Jargon File in his own image, but adding to it, i.e.: making it more useful, and this is a good thing.
If some extra words are added to the Jargon File that suit ESR, then no loss, many only notice the jargon defintions for words they see or use anyhow. (In any event, a small price to pay to have the Jargon File, nobody else is maintaining it.)
I don't believe adding a word or two that is jargon within the warblogging groups to the Jargon File is a thing that has anything to do with ESR's personal image; although, it is a fact and an expected one that the personal experience of any author will effect what they write about.
[3] I recall a mention of Kuro5hin with regard to the fall of
You really don't know much about Western European politics, do you?
The current political environment is largely social democratic and the "rise in conservatism" is mostly a rise in anti-immigration sentiment among working class people.
In order to compare the spectrum of political ideology between the US and Europe, you have to consider that the baseline is different, and in some cases also the division between left/right ideals.
Also note that neoconservatism is a US term and specifically refers to a group of people who think that US foreign policy has been too soft and that the US should be pretty much dictating world politics. It refers more to that specific group of people, not a political ideology, although the use of the term probably will change. Using it to refer to that specific group has even been considered anti-semitic because the prominent neocons usually referred to are Jews.
Anyway, a common ideology among hackers seems to be to strongly support individual freedoms and civil liberties, but also support government oversight of corporations, which is pretty much the standard left-liberal position, which ESR excluded entirely. Or perhaps that's what he means by "moderate", but that would pretty much have to be his personal definition...