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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."
And here I thought ESR was a level-headed, objective advocate of OSS.
levine
Great... an arbitrary geek. Can't really say i know much about said jargon file. It seems tho that this would cause problems if noone else used some of this.
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. :)
Linux: Bastardisation of GNU/Linux used by entities that simply don't care about all my hard work.
Who the heck is ESR, and why is he messing with my jargon file!??
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Oh come now...ever since APL and C the geek community has relied on write-only, only-original-author-understands languages. This is just maintaining the great tradition.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
- There lived a man once who was called Gandhi. If you see the Jargon file, he uses Gandhi and Ghandi as if they were interchangeable. Then again, as long as you inventing you own Jargon, what's a spelling here and there?
- What, no gun advocacy yet?
ESR is the drunkard and gun advocate that coined the term Open Source. He's also the author of fethcmail.
Brett Glass
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
He likes talking about guns a lot. I wouldn't mess
with him. If he wants to make up some words and
stuff, aweshum. At least he isn't climbing a tower
with a rifle, or 'liberating' anyone to death. YET.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
When a single person has that much control over the content of what is ostensibly a "living document", these things are bound to occur. I'm glad that he informed me that I'm supposed to reject hard-left political thinking, otherwise I may have embarassed myself in the near future.
ESR's been doing this for years - ever since he took over maintenance of the Jargon File, he's been adding crap definitions that exist only to push his views.
That's why I treasure my original copy of the GLS-edited Hacker's Dictionary...
ESR is Eric S. Raymond, author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", the essay which was cited as a prime reason for Netscape's decision to release their browser source, and many other essays on Open Source. He was a co-founder of the OSI, and is the long-time maintainer of .
His website is here.
Of course, a google search would have told you all of this.
Just glancing over the site I see that the first entry in the changelog is the Entry called '404' - clicking upon that entry gives you what?
A 404 - page not found error.
I wonder how that'll be represented in the paper version of the book, perhaps listing it in the index as page 2.5?
1 ESR is basically redefining everyone around you to only exist in your own personal universe, where you of course are the most important person alive. Thus 1 ESR is the maximum this unit can ever attain, anything above 1 would mean instant insanity.
With apologies to Douglas Adams.
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
This is not new. Ever since ESR first took over the dictionary he has been writing it around his own image. I guess he just found some time now to do a worse job and go full out.
A dictionary should not have opinions in it and the lexicon is full of it.
Once again, it's Gandhi, not Ghandi.
Also, while the changelog spells it correctly, the link there again points to the "Ghandi" spelling. This is the correct link.
And for the curious and lazy, this is the corresponding entry:
GandhiCon
There is a quote from Mohandas Gandhi, describing the stages of establishment resistence to a winning strategy of nonviolent activism, that partisans of open source and especially Linux have embraced as almost an explanatory framework for the behaviors they observe while trying to get corporations and other large institutions to take new ways of doing things seriously:
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
In hacker usage this quote has miscegenated with the U.S military's DefCon terminology describing âdefense conditionsâ(TM) or degrees of war alert. At GhandiCon One, you're being ignored. At GhandiCon Two, opponents are laughing at you and dismissing the idea that you could ever be a threat. At GhandiCon Three, they're fighting you on the merits and/or attempting to discredit you. At GhandiCon Four, you're winning and they are arguing to save face or stave off complete collapse of their position.
Somebody should fork this project now.
I always did think that the section at the back entitled "A Portrait of J. Random Hacker" read more like "A Portrait of Eric S. Raymond".
-Stephen
..it's ESR.
This piece at NTK sounds like flamebait. For the following reasons.
1) They claim he's added terms to the jargon file that... "on closer search-engine examination, appear to have been used almost exclusively by Raymond himself."
The concept that a term that is (by the very context of it's entry) "jargon" would have to have any search engine presence seems like a very bad assumption. Though it's not a common part of net-speech, I'd had the word "Fucktard" taunted at me in Half-Life TFC games long before I'd read it in anything a search engine could reference. The fact that one of the hacker communities most literate advocates would have the majority of hits for a new bit of jargon sounds more like probability mechanics at work than any sinister plot by ESR to reshape the vocabulary of the Internet.
2) They take issue with his update of the "politics" section. It's 77 words long, and seems like as good a summary as one could come up with. http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/politics.html
3) I've put together documents like his rebuttal to the SCO mess, and they are an nightmare of fact checking and redesign. When someone makes claims as preposterous as SCO did regarding Linux it's hard to know where to start. It's even harder to know how much background is needed to explain your points to non-unixphiles. I read the whole document and it was a work of art. It was clear, it had links to piles of substantiating data, I'd be surprised if the IBM legal team didn't throw a party when they first read it.
Did anyone pay ESR for this massive effort?
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?
For those of you that don't seem to know - the Hackers Dictionary was WRITTEN by ESR around 1990 if memory serves. Granted that he got most of it's content through requests for definition on Usenet, but he is STILL the original author - so if he chooses to add or delete from it, he is doing so to his own original work.
Sheesh!
Compared to the SCO versus the rest of the world fight going on right now - this is mouse nuts!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Ruchard Stallman could have changed it and added "GNU/" in front of every word!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
They gave ESR more free time to waste by not accepting his CML2. Linus, you should measure your decisions more carefully.
sgis ddo ekil t'nod i
I wept when, inexplicably, I could no longer access esr/jargon.
/Const Woe=Me
Now, it is back; the same, yet different. And I weep again.
Such is this "life" thing.
I saw ESR speak a few years ago. It was a pretty small group (~50 people or so), and so the floor was constantly open to questions for him. He was an absolute dickhead. I asked him simply why he didn't include computer security experts in his definition of hacker and he went off on me for 20 minutes. I then countered with a perfectly valid point. To which he countered with a school-boyish sneer, and nothing more.
He is also the most self-centered geek I've encountered. I can remember vividly a few years ago that he published "10 Sex Tips for Geeks" on Valentines day. If you have ever layed eyes on the man, you know that he is the last person you would ever want to be accepting sex tips from.
If we want this open source movement to take off, we need somebody who's a little more socially adept as our spokesperson. Don't even get me started on how outrageous the whole bazaar and geek-gift culture are.
__________________________________________
Take comfort in your ignorance.
Grandmaster Plague
i see what u mean.
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
I can't wait to read the Apocalypse according to ESR.
I'm sure it will include guns, lots of guns...
The guy has serious issues.
Base, n
All belong to us!
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
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
the Hackers Dictionary was WRITTEN by ESR around 1990 if memory serves
This entry in Wikipedia says "The Jargon File (hereafter referred to as `jargon-1' or `the File') was begun by Raphael Finkel at Stanford in 1975."
The world will end in 5 minutes. Please log out.
I'll do it for free (the first time, anyway)
In other news, Microsoft, creators of the "Open Source is like a virus" theory, have unveiled the "Open source is like drug dealership" theory.
By reading this comment, you immediately waive any and all rights regarding it.
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
ESR's secret slashdot user name...
I think this line gave you away
" 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?"
Just because some isn't paid to do something selfish and egotistical, doesn't mean we have to like it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If they can get him laid, then they should be able to get anyone laid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'll just add that all the complaints about ESR's ego, bring to my mind how well he must have done in keeping his, supposedly gigantic, ego out of the orignal jargon file.
I, myself, am curious why ANY ONE PERSON, would have such control over something like this. My suggestion is to make the f^cking thing WikiWiki, and let the whole hacker community edit it and add to it. Donâ(TM)t know why the hell it wasnâ(TM)t done that way in the first place. Thereâ(TM)s no denying itâ(TM)s right in line with ERSâ(TM)s philosophy, so he should embrace it. He should, but he wonâ(TM)t. Heâ(TM)ll go against his very philosophy because he likes the power heâ(TM)s got now. And since he wonâ(TM)t, my suggestion would be to take the advice that don gives in the article. Fork the file, and make it the âtrueâ(TM) version by making it the collaborative voice of the entire community, and make ESRâ(TM)s little diatribe irrelevant.
though ESR significantly enhanced the whole effort during the mid-80's and published as a book.
Actually, according to the Jargon file itself, it was GLS who did the editing for the first book: (see here).
About six months ago I looked for copies of the older versions of the Jargon File. That was not as easy as it sounds. I don't know if ESR has been intentionally ridding the internet of the older versions, but I wasn't too happy about how difficult they were to find. If the older versions of the Jargon File completely disappear, then a valuable part of computer history will be lost. In it's place will be the mindless, egotistical rants of someone who thinks the Open Source community revolves around himself.
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.
Meyer criticizes the self-assumed ethical superiority of ESR, RMS, and others, and in particular notes the "gun evangelism" ESR intertwines with his open-source evangelism.
This thoughtful article should be required reading for all overly-strident geeks.
Nah, that's just plain old ESR (a bit younger and thinner, though).
I'd say this picture shows more of a metamorphosis. :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Where does Raymond get off claiming authority over the "Hacker's Dictionary". He's not even mentioned in the original edition. The real "Hacker's Dictionary", of course, comes from the MIT AI Lab, and the MIT Jargon File. The original book publication was in 1983 (Steele, Guy. New York, Harper & Row, ISBN 0-06-091082-8). That's the Hacker's Dictionary. Everything else is popular trash by people who weren't there.
And where was the open/free graphical OS back in 1991? To compete with Windows 3.1 and the Mac? With things like PageMaker and WordPerfect and Excel and so on?
Especially amusing is this:
It always seemed to me that he's describing himself.No, Eric did not coin the term "open source", Brett. He was at the meeting where the term was suggested, but it wasn't him.
The guy has serious issues.
Just the typical issues of someone who's read too much Heinlein. Nothing more.
http://www.maxwell.com/ultracapacitors/products/PC 2500.html
Nope, it's actually blog pollution:
gandhicon -eric -raymond -esr -"welcome to gandhicon 4": 15 hits
The original source (a blog entry by Doc Searls) involves a conversation between the author and Raymond. So, it looks like there are only two people actively using the term: Doc Searls and ESR.
Actually, the fellow who was giving space on tuxedo.org for Eric kicked him off in the obviously impolite manner that you can see from your link. Rather than insert a redirect to catb.org, or put in his own explanation for why he broke all of Eric's URLs, he's just redirecting to J. Random pages. Jerk. Eric is in fact still hosting the definitive version.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Documentation makes the code (of ethics) easier to read, Eric.
That's free as in free association, not free as in free to be you and me, as he never said.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
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.
Chrisd
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
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.
Now if people would just stop saying "It's called cracker, not hacker. Teh jargon file even says so."
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Aside from the fact that you aren't Brett Glass (he has a slashdot login, thankyouverymuch), Eric doesn't drink. For that matter, he doesn't even call himself ESR.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Some links
8 94 139
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=63272&cid=5
"My little town has a eight little churches"
"heated but friendly arguments over MVPs like Bruce, Eric, and Richard"
http://www.catb.org/~esr/personal.html
"I live in Malvern, Pennsylvania"
http://www.churchangel.com/WEBPA/malvern.htm
Reading the account's comments, it has an "us vs. them" attitude WRT open source, and claims long-time involvement, yet it's a very recent account. Oh, and most damning of all, ESR has a cat.
It does kind of get me that he complains about only getting a free economy class ticket for that ride from Phildalphia to Melborne.
Cripes.
Revisionist historians might now make the claim that 'The Cathederal and the Bazaar' outlines the open source software creation process but when it was originally written, it was a polemic against the 'Cathederal' method of software development being practiced by the GNU Emacs development team.
"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.
No, it wasn't "in the common vernacular". It was considered to be too descriptive. However, given that everybody associates "Open Source" with open source programs these days, it might actually be a defensible trademark. In any case, the Open Source Initiative has been using and defending the name for years now.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Someone should tell ESR there are hackers outside of Texas. Neo Conservatism is virtually inexistant in Europe, where the corporate brain washing procedures are much less developped than they are in ESR's trailer park, and have to actually compete with a working education system.
Dev elpizw tipota, dev phoboumai tipota eimai lephteros http://euclidian.org
The latest OED also seems to have trouble with adding some slang terms that are obscure or will quickly vanish from common use.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Okay, Eric *might* have coined the term GandhiCon, but I've heard quite a number of other people cite the Gandhi quote as an explanation for the Linux adoption process.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
are you just talking or do you really want to do it? anybody else interested in reclaiming that project from the malignant hands of ESR?
Dev elpizw tipota, dev phoboumai tipota eimai lephteros http://euclidian.org
As a general rule, anyone in the OSS community who is referred to by their 3 initials is likely to be nuts.
He's the maintainer, he has the power, he uses it. Show me the guy who wouldn't put in some of their own stuff and their own views. I would, and so would 99.9% of people.
Here's a new word for you --- "ESRhole"
...or something like that.
..which I hope somebody will do:
ESRhole - one who takes command of something, proclaiming himself God and is no longer subject to criticism.
As for applicable fixes, wget yourself a mirror of v4.2 here
I know, it's still got a bit of ESR in there, but it's free from the latest bugs, and so therefore more easily cleaned...
Fork it! *kerrack* Fork it good!
With the slightly older version, all one needs to do is set up a new tribunal or something to clean it, repost it, and then add to it as a team. Split the power three or five ways-- hold monthly or bimonthly meetings to discuss submissions, and Make It So.
THAT would be a Good Thing.
Barak Michener
The pre-ESR version of the Hacker's Dictionary is online as well. http://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html
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.
I can't believe this guy. He thinks he's God or something. I started reading "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" a week ago, and still haven't finished it. I couldn't read more than a page at a time because it was so dripping with his egoism. I mean, it makes me sick to read that stuff.
the toothpaste is frozen
A few years back at Geekfest in Cambridge (MA), a co-worker of mine observed ESR telling a local newspaper reporter with a straight face that all geeks are libertarians. I don't think that the idea that every single last one of his fellow engineers might not subscribe to every last one of his pet political causes would ever occur to the man.
Raymond has always been an egomaniac blowhard with a self-opinion exceeding his actual worth by several orders of magnitude, and if you don't believe me, just ask any member of the linux kernel mailing list.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
If only someone had taught him to keep his finger off the trigger...
To be fair, I'm certain a gun enthusiast like ESR knows better; still, it sucks to have your lapse in gun safety photographed and spread across the internet.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
...is a Smith & Wesson.
Graham
Linux - Fast Pane Relief
For what it's worth, the name's Gandhi, not Ghandi.
Pronunciation from M-W.com
-Shaunak.
That is *SO* true. He's the one responsible for all the "the proper term is cracker" threads that break out here. The term cracker was *never* widely used. Old time computer nerds of any hat color were "hackers". According to was Obscure Images of the cDc:
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
A couple of years ago I made a post complaining about ESR in general and the Jargon file specifically. One of ESR's 'claims to fame' was being the maintainer of the Jargon file, but he was doing a pretty poor job. It contained mostly obsolete terms, and missed out on obvious things like Quake, Apache, JDK (it has an entry for java, but simply said that it sucked and hackers would stay away from it.).
Someone flamed me saying that it was for 'serious things', i.e. not quake, yet the file contained Nethack.
The future of the Jargon file lays in places like everything2, which has far more information then the jargon file, and other computerized, database systems.
To be honest, I really wish people simply stop talking about ESR and ignore him. Hopefully he'll go away.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The Emperor Has No Clothes
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.
Raymond, Eric S. Raymond. master spy..
See, he's so ugly no one would suspect a thing.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
that a gun-wielding egomaniac should be quoting Gandhi. LOL.
Cool. That's great to hear. If the paper was produced for hire, then it should be held to a higher standard of perfection. So perhaps his inaccurate statements regarding the capabilities of Unixware should have been better researched.
However, (you knew it was coming), I would have to suggest that the "Get it perfect before releasing it" paradigm is not as effective as the "release early, release often" one [evidence]. I didn't catch his SCO rebuttal until it had been "in the wild" for some time, but from what little I know of the flaws that were fixed, it sounds like the real fault would be if he didn't mark the first released draft as ".9 RC5" and welcome comments. If he didn't do such a thing and he's making large sums of money on this, then I can be dissappointed with his thoroughness.
If he did, then it would seem like behavior extremely consistent with the "Bazaar" methodologies he's well known to espouse. In fact, adhereing to the "Cathedral" model in this development and thereby denying the value of peer review would have seemed a bit ironic. Whether he did or didn't mark the paper Beta, he did respond to community input and alter to suit.
Actually, breaking copy-protection schemes was 'cracking' and people who did that were called 'crackers'. It never had anything to do with network security until ESR got his grubby little mitts on it. And thankfully that use seems to have died out.
If ESR had any brains he would have picked something not being used alredy, like a translation of the chinese term 'dark guest'. But he didn't.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
fucktard first apeared on usenet in 1994. half life was released in 1998.
A fucktard is you.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
We all feel we can do it better than Eric so let's engage in some bikeshedding by picking at minor details and criticizing ad-nauseum.
Eric Raymond has spent considerable time and invested a *lot* of work over the years - and not just on the jargon file but as an advocate of open source and hackerdom generally. For-goodness-sake, he was the main author of Fetchmail, so that makes him a *real* unix hacker who has written *real* working open source code that is on just about every unix/linux box around (unlike some wannabe losers as I suspect most of the anti-ESR posters might be). He wrote "The Cathedral & the Bazaar" which has been described as having persuaded Netscape to open source thier browser and thereby create the mozilla project. How many of us can say that ! I can't, so I wont criticize, even if I don't agree with everything he puts in the file. So those wannabes who feel like they have the stature to criticize... go ahead, flame away. Spend all day and night flaming about what color the bikeshed should be.
If the everybody feels that the hacker lexicon should be a "scholarly work" with only substantiated widespread usage included, set up a forum or mail-list and accept submissions for new words and phrases with proof of actual usage (like links to mailing list entries and boards where the word has actually been used). Measure occurances and if an entry gets enough "critical mass", then submit it to Eric for inclusion. Hey - maybe you can get your sociology doctorate that way. Participate, just don't sit there throwing flames.
I would bet ESR would describe this as, "some snotty know it all wanted to start an argument, but I ignored him and moved on with my talk so I wouldn't bore the hell out of the audience."
It's also a no-brainer, on grounds of pure self-interest, to take reasonable precautions against STDs. I'm going to buck the current wisdom here and point out that, statistically, AIDS is a negligible risk for white heterosexuals in the U.S. unless your partner has needle tracks or you have an ulcerating STD like chancroids. Outside those circumstances, people in the U.S. and other developed countries probably get killed by lightning strikes more often than they catch AIDS through unprotected heterosexual intercourse (which is why the disease is now in decline here and has been for years).
Of course, we all know all geeks are White, and that race is the most important determinant of AIDS-yness
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The other half being to include terms which are politically incorrect by ESR's right-wing standards.
So, it's a matter of inclusion, as well as filtering.
Of course, I love the tuxedo.org idea...unless the man who runs tuxedo.org is another gun nut, and they simply fell out over implementation.
Warblogging is simply blogging about military politics. Quite stupid, really.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It is for these people that MacOS 9 was created.
Not MacOS X, mind you...there are just enough unixisms to allow a random luser to make a complete mess of it. MacOS 9 has no daemons running by default (ditch Web Sharing to make sure) and no way to remotely login unless you install third-party programs like VNC or RumpusFTP. (For godsake keep 'em away from P2P programs!)
Aside from the occasional Word Macro Virus (easily avoided by keeping Ma and Pa away from Office 2001 or Office98) and a few random worms like HK Autostart and Sevendust (Freeware proggies like WormScanner and Agax will get them) they are virus-free. I don't think even the Mac version of Lookout Excess is prone to the kind of trojan horses the Windows version is prone to.
Just find a used iMac (CRT kind, not LCD kind...they are going cheap on eBay) and if you're lucky, it will come with a MacOS "system restore" disk. Before you start up, buy a low-priced USB mouse or trackball to replace the ergonomic nightmare that is the "hockey puck" mouse. Boot the iMac with one of those puppies, open up Drive Setup, and initialize that HD. Then do a reinstall of the system. Put Eudora on it for mail, Mozilla for the web* (IE for Mac is a POS) and then put the machine behind a Linksys and have the Linksys handle the DHCP authentication for the cable modem. Don't activate the DHCP server in the Linksys, just give the iMac a static IP in the range of the Linksys and give it the Linksys' LAN IP as its gateway.
You do that, Bob's your uncle, and your parents can surf 'til the cows come home. And they won't come home with back doors, trojans or viruses.
*Even easier: AOHell BYO Access program. $10 over and above their cable bill each month, unless they are on Time Warner Cable and if memory serves me right it is included. A "Walled Garden" designed for n00bz.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
urbandictionary.com has the best format for this sort of thing (IMO).
The only thing ESR did for the OSS community was attach his name to it and cash in.
And write a few utilities.
Name one thing that wouldn't have happend without him. Unlike linux (you can't say we would have had linux without him) or RMS (you can't say we would have had anything like the GPL at all without him) ESR has produced nothing but hot air. The OSI was created with Parens and probably would have come about if ESR never existed.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I mean. Fortunetly for you the slashdot editors didn't say anything about ESR, they just posted a link and comments that were sent to them.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
ESR didn't write the thing, he just took the public domain text, added a few entries, and declared himself a god.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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.
tard pwn (j00) derf
Besides, 'tard' 'pwn' and 'derf' are hardly all that common. Definetly less common then 'apache' or 'xbox' or 'dot-bomb', none of which apperan in the jargon file.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Definetly less common then 'apache' or 'xbox' or 'dot-bomb', none of which apperan in the jargon file.
/. comment.
They were examples, I wasn't about to sift through the jargon file looking for perfect examples to write a
And anyway, I cringe at the thought of an xbox user or someone who runs a webserver thinking they're hackers.
Gee, I wonder why people think he is a pompous prick...
You're clearly not somebody that ever gets asked to do these things are you.
Personally, I think ESR is a complete asshole, but his demands here are eminently reasonable. He's giving up his time *for free* and all he asks is that his expenses are taken care of.
Now I'm nothing like as in-demand as Raymond must be, but I know what a pain in the arse it is to run around the UK doing free or expenses only speaking gigs like this. When you're speaking for free, not only are you not being paid, you're actually *losing* money, because you cant get paid for the stuff you'd normally be doing.
In light of that, the very least you can expect is that the people who invite you ensure that you're as comfortable as possible and not out of pocket -- and if they can't do that, then they've no business asking you.
So yes, he may well be a pompous prick -- but there's nothing in this list of demands that indicates that. Unfortunately, there's more than enough evidence in his other writing to compensate...
But unlike NTK, the jargon file is not supposed to be a news outlet or reflect somebodies personal ideas but document common use. So your claims are entirely unreasonable and without any merit.
...ESR with RMS.
... all our catch phrase are belong to ESR ...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
... for a /. poll. It would by no means be the scientific evidence you're looking for, but it would certainly be interesting thought fodder.
i an?i c?
Where do you see yourself in the Political Spectrum?
NeoConservative?
Paleoconservative?
Liberitar
Traditionally well-established Liberal (hippie)?
Post-Scarcity Gift Cultural?
Redmondcentric?
PaleoNeoCowboyNealist
I have no beef with the entry on GandhiCon, which I thought was witty and deserving of a place.
There are a few entries where the ESR-factor is bothering me, though, with the hacker politics page being the worst.
I love the line "Hackers are far more likely than most non-hackers to either (a) be aggressively apolitical or (b) entertain peculiar or idiosyncratic political ideas and actually try to live by them day-to-day." which rings very true to my ears, and how the geeks (including myself) view politics. (I know people of both category a and b.)
However, that category "b" definitely includes socialistic (esp. anarchistic) views, especially (but not limited to) outside the US. I've met plenty of hackers who hate all lefties and I've met plenty who see themselves as socialist. The phrase "affected by the collapse of socialism" just sounds like what I read in plenty of rightwing-oriented literature (I like to read stuff from both sides of the camp), but it seems false. The latest years I've seen a great strengthening in various leftlibertarian/anarchist movements. The only thing that's crumbling with the Berlin wall is leninism (and part of marxism), not the socialistic ideals themselves.
Tonight, being in a good mood since it's a nice summer night here, I feel like suggesting that hackers should view each other with kindness regardness of immediate political view. Most hackers have a fondness for freedom, and even though some of us think that corporatism and capitalism are the greatest contemporary threat to that freedom while others think that capitalism is the best means to reach and uphold a state of freedom, the entry in the jargon file should reflect that hackerdom is not a homogenous political movement.
I saw him speak once downtown (NYC) and was turned off by the fact that some lady got up during "question time" and asked somethiing related to propriatery software. He then stated he would not answer her question because she was talking about closed-source. I'm sure he's done wonderful things for the community, but that doesn't matter. I'm not impressed.
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
The only change that ESR has recently made to the hacker politics page is adding one clause reflecting the slight conservative shift after the collapse of the USSR. And I've been using the term "Aunt Tillie" for a while now. Whomever posted this article obviously has a bug up his ass about ESR - which is understandable if you don't like his politics - but the accusations leveled at him here are totally groundless.
I hate how Eric Raymond tries to define an entire culture of hackers. Many of his ideas are not true, such as Java REPLACING C++. I'm a mix of Republican and Libertarian, but I believe that most hackers/geeks are anarchists/socialists. He claims his ideas came from a survey of Usenet, but where are the numbers? I think he wrote it all himself.
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
That's definitely not cool by me, especially since, back in 1993, I submitted several terms I made up with fabricated histories, and ESR failed to include them in the dictionary.
OTOH, some other putative references have been happily absorbing all the bullshit I can make up for some time now, so I guess it all evens out in the end.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
In the entry on Hacker Personality, ESR tells about how he managed to remember the 477 pages of the TeX-book in 4 days. By itself this is quite impressive.
However, I cannot help but get the impression of someone bragging of themselves. Such personal anecdotes do not really belong in a reference work. And I am not really sure about whether this is a good example of what hackers do. To me, their main trait is that they create, rather than memorize, things.
One might argue that one never should call oneself a hacker, but this appears to be OK once the title has been bestowed by others.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
Thats it kids, work it out of your system. He was there from the beggining, dealing with a healthy portion of what defines us and you were not. I know It's killing you. Is it his ego thats hurting or yours? Whos making the rabid attacks, him or you?. I love it when people trash the mountain that was built before their time. Of course if you've given more (or even a fraction more) for our community feel free to tell me off, otherwise don't even bother pressing "reply". Why do you go visit his website if it pisses you off? Does he owe you something? Have you paid him for a service that he is not giving you?
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
Which the GNU Emacs development team promptly lept into action and ignored.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
ESR has many less than pleasent characteristics. But he does get out and do stuff that others don't.
If you don't like what he puts in the hackers dictionary then contribute the stuff _you_ see in everyday use. If ESR doesn't accept it then fork a version.
Remember dictionaries don't contain stuff that is immutable, they contain current usage. Meanings and usage change with time, live with it.
Actually, according to the Jargon file itself, it was GLS who did the editing for the first book: (see here).
Butbutbut, he at least invented the Internet and personally wrote the suite of software that makes the Linux kernel useful, right?
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I don't know if there's any list of things cut out before version 4.0, but if you want to compare the current version with older ones, there are three print versions from before 4.0 that should still be available from libraries. They are listed in the Jargon File's revision history.
Your missing the fact that he's going to Melbourne to talk, for free, at someones event. Yes he's a dick, but I don't think you'ld be taking too many 20 hour trips for someone elses benefit.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
A: All they're interested in is eyeballs. Terrorists go for symbolic targets, and body count is secondary. If they had weapons capable of killing millions instead of thousands, they'd be something more than terrorists.
A. For the sickos that flew those plans into the WTC, mass body count has a symbology all its own. It makes its own statement, like "we hate you, and we can kill thousands of you anytime we want so you must submit to our demands!" The terror is the point of the whole operation; what will strike the most terror in the victims - and a mass body count will do it. If they were only interested in bombing "symbols" they could blow lots of statues in parks with no victims, but instead they choose crowded places, like when Hamas and Islamic Jihad blow up crowded cafes. Don't confuse the old-style terrorists who hijacked planes for pure publicity with Al-Qada. They old terrorists were not suicidal and they had semi-rational demands (like a prisoner exchange of hostages for terrorists in prision). The modern terrorists of Al-Qada are a new thing, they are suicidal fanatics who hijack planes to kill as many people as possible. They have only one aim, the complete supremacy of islam over the world.
If you want massive casualties, you'll need to look at organized warfare and genocide. There's where you find the routine killings of hundreds and thousands of people. Terrorists are penny-ante killers. I'm not denying that killing a lot of people pleased the terrorists at the Trade Center, but I am saying that their primary goal was to put the killing on television, body count being secondary. The rest of your comment shows you've drunk the anti-idiotarian koolaid. In lieu of ipecac, I can't help you there. But I will leave you with this thought: Just because someone hates idiots doesn't mean he isn't an idiot himself.
You recognize that political beliefs aren't a simple single-dimensional space. But economic beliefs aren't either.
Capitalism does not require a strong governement. Does communism? Either can exist with or without a government to enforce the system on the population. The origins of lasse-faire capitalism were in societies that had small governments, and capitalism was far more of a social emergence than a politcal imposition. In early 18th century England, for example, government was far smaller than in any developed country these days.
If you're referring to things like copyrights, then take note: Advocating Copyrights or IP rights != capitalism. Having a police force, military, militia or societal traditions that discourage people from stealing other's "stuff" is necessary for capitalism, but does not imply a large, dictatorial government. Having law and order, and not having rampant raping, looting and pillaging, is necessary for virtually any form of civilised society, not just capitalism.
I suppose what I'm saying is that not everyone who advocates "capitalism" is talking about the same thing, just as talking about "liberalism" or "conservatism" can mean a wide variety of different things.
ESR is the drunkard and gun advocate that coined the term Open Source.
While he is indeed a gun advocate, and did indeed coin the term Open Source, he is NOT a drunkard. He's never even consumed alcohol in my presence, and has had several opportunities to do so.
(Aside: Why is being a gun advocate such a bad thing to anyone whose opinions I should care about?)
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Oh, that explains the funny-shaped bush in his front yard.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Blame that on me. You see, I took the time to note several terms that are in common use on news.admin.net-abuse.email, figure out good definitions for them, write them down, and then email them to him.
There's nothing secret about any of that. Think there's jargon that needs to be added? Write it up and send it in!
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Shit, man. If someone offered me a free plane ticket to Australia I wouldn't carp and whine about it.
Maybe you didn't read the part about 'make sure you supply me with a local cellphone in case you need to reach me when I go sightseeing.'
"it's ex-liberals".
Apache, Quake, JDK aren't jargon, they are product names. Anyone curious about what they are can punch them into google and find their home pages. The Jargon file documents common to ultra-obscure terms that have become a part of the shared language of hackers. It isn't a comprehensive product listing, nor is it a comprehensive listing of technical terms. If you want technical terms defined, use FOLDOC.
Now, I think certain slang terms (such as "fragging") from the Quake community have become sufficiently common in the wider geek lexicon that they could legitimately be called "Jargon" at this point. And, lo and behold, there is in fact an entry for "frag", with a note to see also "gib". Looks like ESR is doing a fine job of keeping up with the times.
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
"There is a strong libertarian contingent which rejects conventional left-right politics entirely. The only safe generalization is that hackers tend to be rather anti-authoritarian; thus, both paleoconservatism and âhardâ(TM) leftism are rare. Hackers are far more likely than most non-hackers to either (a) be aggressively apolitical or (b) entertain peculiar or idiosyncratic political ideas and actually try to live by them day-to-day."
Simple enough!!
Eric has done alot for the open source community, but clearly many people on /. and in the community like to spend more time sniping than offering constructive critcism or helping on a project.
Those people always try to stereotype others. How we can we stand for that sort of thing? Oh wait, do I mean gun owners or people who judge them?
I mean people who judge them.
I am a Geek. I drive a 4wd. I shoot. I argue. I think. I adhere to libertarian ideas regarding rights and responsibilities. What are you?
I come from the US. I own and use guns, and I've been a shooter since I was four. I have never seen a loaded gun leap from a table and kill a room full of people, or shoot a teacher, or a husband or a wife or a sibling. I haven't seen one addicted to crank or crack or coke. I've never seen one rob a bank, or beat up an old man.
I enjoy those who think that their freedoms supercede mine, who think that their irrational feelings and fears should have some sway over my life. You can live in your gunless culture. But I don't have to and neither does ESR.
FWIW: When I met ESR at Linux Expo in 1998, we were talking guns when a young Canadian hacker joined the conversation and argued the point that "guns are bad." Bad choice on his part, since he too had no evidence, no studies, no nothing except his feelings.
Don't be afraid of others exercising their freedoms. Be afraid of anyone who would take any of your freedom.
Nobody really gets it for the articles, duh!
Sorry... Couldn't resist.
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of someone who says 'pwn' on a regular basis considering themselves a hacker?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
To quote Eddie Izzard, "The National Rifle Association says that guns don't kill people, people do â" but I think the gun helps." Yes, it is true that a gun is an inert object, and laying on the table, loaded or unloaded, it will not, of its own volition, kill anyone or anything. However, if I had to choose between facing a psychopath with a gun or a psychopath with a knife, I think I know which option I prefer. Most importantly, is this: The main goals of the liberal left in the debate over the second amendment are not to eliminate gun ownership entirely (although there certainly are people on the left who like that idea), but to license their ownership. We license doctors, we license lawers, we require a license to drive your car. Why on earth wouldn't we want to license guns, which are, undeniably, dangerous in the hands of someone not trained in proper care and usage of firearms?
Bruce Perens is decidedly less crazy than RMS and ESR. Also, in the movie Revolution OS he is reminiscent of Emo Phillips from UHF. Therefore, I kindly request that you rescind any comments maligning his character.
So yes, he may well be a pompous prick -- but there's nothing in this list of demands that indicates that.
I would agree that most of his demands are fairly reasonable - but the tone of the whole thing is rather nasty.
fuck you.
Let's license all constitutional rights. And while we're add it, apply extra taxes like those on guns and ammo. Let's make sure that every computer user is licensed (we license radio operators after all). I have the feeling that your opinion changes when the subject the regulation changes. For me the Bill of Rights is not an a la Carte menu. In addition, it grants nothing (as noted by the authors and the federalists). Instead, it specifically limits the government.
I've had to defend myself with both a knife and a gun. I much prefer the gun.
You're right, my attitude does change based on what's being discussed. It's called context. For instance, when the item being discussed can threaten my life, or the life of others, i tend to take the view that maybe we should ensure that those people know what they are doing. Secondly, as long as you are interested in being a strict constructionist; I don't see how licensing would be abridging the right to keep or bear arms, merely regulating that right. And if you don't consider the bill of rights "a la Carte" i fully expect you to also protest the requirement for press credentials and the necessity of acquiring a permit before peacably assembling. After all, we wouldn't want anyone regulating our other constitutional rights.
The parent is funny, this is not.
In addition, I'm hardly a strict constructionist (at least in the classic sense). I do believe that we can interpret and extrapolate. But, I also believe that a right is a right, not a priveledge, not an accomodation, not an exception. We have entered a time when our citizens fear each other more than those who would take their rights. A time when they are willing to trade their freedom for the illusion of safety. A time when the very ideals that set us apart are under attack not from without, but within.
This seems to be an issue that many people fail to understand. But, the rights of the Constitution "PRE-EXIST" government. They are not granted by government, they are protected from it. Anything that government may grant (such as a license), it may revoke. That which is subject to arbitrary revocation cannot be a right.
So, I won't worry about you speaking your mind, which could lead to injury or death to someone and you shouldn't worry about me owning guns.