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ESR steps down from OSI
Hope Thelps writes "According to an article on news.com.com, Eric Raymond is stepping down from his role as president of the OSI. His replacement will be our very own Russ Nelson. "
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Did I do it?
The way i see it, it's a sign that Open Source is finally growing up. Fanatics like ESR might do good to the cause in the early stages of revolution, but in the longer run, they will always prove to be an annoyance and will be dealt with. See, for instance, what Stalin did with the veterans of the Russian Revolution, or how Fidel Castro got rid of Che. Every revolution has ended up eating its children; i can't see why the Open Source Revolution should be different.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Hooray!
Looks like Eric finally accepted the job offer from Microsoft.
:^)
Just kidding Eric, don't shoot me!
The submissions mentioned Russ's Slashdot Page, but a lot more info about him can be found at his home page and/or his company Crynwr.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
I look forward to his long-winded rambling pseudo-philosophical treatise on what it feels like to step down, and how that relates to the ethos of the Open Source movement.
I *actually* got a first post.
I can not believe this is so!
Oh happy day! I think I shall call my mother and share with her the wonderous news!
The elections were rigged.
The way the ballot was designed, your vote counted for Russ Nelson, when in fact you were voting for Pat Buchanan.
Why the hell do we need another organization to promote open source. This is getting out of hand. Everyone is trying to be a chairman, CEO, head of board, so they start these unnecessary organizations.
How many foundations, consortiums, non-profit organizations we do need?! If you entity don't set financial, technical or legal standards, it's probably not really needed.
769bfa901720ca09dd5fda25d1acdea2
Fear not, knowledgeable people, and learn quite how full of shit ESR is.
ESR didn't step down, according to the article, he stepped aside.
-- SouNerd.com
Obligatory Good Morning Vietnam:
"Excuse me sir, seeing as how the VP is such a VIP, shouldn't we keep the PC on the QT, because if it leaks to the VC, you could end up an MIA, and then we'd all be put on KP."
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
You can get secret naked pictures of him touching printouts of open source code for all of your F/OSS fetish needs!
From the article:
Since when? Last time I checked, "open source" was a generic descriptor, and only use of the OSI CERTIFIED mark required approval from the Open Source Initiative.
Naw, I have to call. Her hearing aid is acting up.
From the article:
:P These business-orientated news sites have had fucking ages to get the facts right on all this stuff and they still can't do it.
Approval from the OSI is required for all open-source licenses, which are used on thousands of products, from the Linux operating system to the Firefox Web browser.
Erm, what? I don't need anyone to "approve" my software's license
But no!!! You're wrong! You're so wrong! FOSS is different. It's not meant to fall victim to the ravings of mad dictators like Fidel or the commies. ESR is simply stepping down in order to let someone else have a turn. After all, what fairness would there be in not letting everyone in the community have a shot at being the top dog for a while? ESR probably has a lot of more important things to get on with right now. I hear he has a fantastic glass eye collection he's been working on for the past decade or so. That kind of thing consumes a lot of time and would prevent one from being able to participate in FOSS evangelizationism as ESR has done. Just imagine how great his collection of glass eyes is going to be after only a year or two of being away from the FOSS evangelizationism. It would put to shame the glass eye collection that Terry Gilliam used in the cut scenes from Brazil. I, for one, welcome our hiatus taking squanderlords! (In case you people are curious, I am completely substance free)
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
hahaha
Does this nelson guy look as retarded as ESR does?
If you entity don't set financial, technical or legal standards, it's probably not really needed.
Open Source Initiative does in fact set legal standards. It maintains a definition of what constitutes an open source license and approves licenses for use with its OSI CERTIFIED branding program.
Anything which reduces the visibility, impact and influence of "ESR" can only be a good thing. Next we take down Cringely, Dvorak, Perens and JonKatz, and the "hoser level" of the technical world drops dramatically. I, for one, welcome our non-obnoxious, bathing-daily, non-debian-fanboy overlords.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
He's a Libertarian
He supports Austrian Economics
He seems to ACTUALLY use Gnu/Linux, not just pretend he does...
I'm not sure I like the idea that OSI is pitching itself as "the authority" of license evaluation. Although it is a lot easier to ask the question, "is license A approved by OSI" to mean "is the software licensed under A open source for me" but the question is flawed. One has to recognized that free software licenses are not created equal. The difference of them, and the choice involved, is what makes open source great.
I once had a signature.
OSI isn't spreading FUD about the phrase "open source", are they?
The guy who like Sun's "OSI Approved" non-free license?
A good guy?
At least we knew what ESR stood for (Open).
in the echo chamber of technology news, all it takes-- as ESR did-- to get branded as a "fanatic" is to speak your mind.
The stepping aside of the "fanatics" doesn't mean anything more or less than the stepping aside of people with opinions, vision, or a desire to succeed. In the future the "open source movement" will be run like a business, like traditional charities and not-for-profits: i.e., inefficiently, carelessly and by bloated fat parasites who care about their own career, not the organization. In the future, groups like OSI will be operated not for the benefit of open source, but for the benefit of the "grown up" OSI group and its personal power. And we will hail it as the "fanatics" losing power.
Does the person taking ESR's place at OSI represent this process? Probably not. But almost certainly his successor will.
Open source isn't a revolution. This isn't Vladmir Lenin trying to convince people to take up arms and shoot people. This is software development. It is a creative endeavor. In a revolution. Revolutions are tricky because you need people who inspire at the beginning and people who are stable after the beginning. But this isn't a revolution. What is creativity without inspiration?
The reasons for this are several fold. Part of it is to discourage new incompatable licenses (you can't use APSL code in Apache that can't be used in Perl that can't be used in Linux that can't be used in AROS, to give some examples.)
Part of it is to make sure that a uniform set of licenses is produced. It's no good having open source, if one group thinks you should email all changes to them, or another thinks they should be able to use your stuff in a proprietary program without permission. The OSI can level the playing field somewhat.
As you might imagine, ESR was behind the bill, lobbying for it extensively behind the scenes. "Sometimes, it takes a government to push forward progress" he said in a recent paper, "The Cauliflower and the Mattress". "We expect governments to do a job, and that's to provide for the common welfare. Open Source is a critical part of our welfare. It is at the heart not merely of the software that runs this country, but of our future. Some might say we would be better off in a world without schools, and healthcare, with only guns to defend ourselves. I say no, that's wrong. Totally backward that is. We don't need guns when we have open source. We don't need to defend ourselves when we have control over the code we run."
Google for "The Cauliflower and the Mattress" and you should find a copy. Inspiring words.
...don't forget to sack the most frothing fanatic of them all, RMS!!
Why is the parent a troll?
Or better yet, to write his reflections on going through life with a complete lack of social skills?
In other news tweedle dumb replaced by tweedle dumber, and tweedle dumb replaces tweedle dee.
...if I may ask...
A slashdot user becomes the head OSI. I think I'll burn down my computer now.
"One of the most important parts of any founder or leader's responsibility is to know when to step aside." --Eric Raymond, co-founder, OSI
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
...so is "[tt]" a new, friendly, and convenient Troll Tag system?
The way i see it, it's a sign that Open Source is finally growing up. Fanatics like ESR might do good to the cause in the early stages of revolution, but in the longer run, they will always prove to be an annoyance and will be dealt with.
1. ESR is hardly a fanatic. He is much more of a pragmatist, falling somewhere between RMS and Torvalds, but much closer to Torvalds than Stallman.
2. OSI is an organization intended to promote Open Source software. As such it behooves OSI to have someone at the help that WON'T compromise the open source initiative's goals and philosophy, so arguing that his successor (who I know nothing about and wouldn't assume to be a great deal different than ESR) should be willing to change the organization's philosophy, political, or technical stance for some short term gain is very short sighted and ultimately destructive to the entire movement.
3. Having said all that, OSI has always been vulnerable to a "corporate takeover." Whether or not this is the case here (I kind of doubt it is), the position they've sought out as "mediator" between the corporate mindset and the free software movement certainly makes them vulnerable to that kind of thing.
4. I sleep much better knowing that RMS heads up the Free Software Foundation. These folks definite the stance of the movement. It isn't their job to compromise with those who oppose their philosophy, it is there job to articulate their philosophy and argue effectively for it. It is then up to the rest of us to choose our own stance, either 100% one or the other, or some middle-of-the-road mixture of the two. OSI falls somewhere in the middle, but to imply that moving toward the business end of the spectrum to the point where they become indistinguishable means the movement has "grown up" is to miss the whole point of the movement entirely.
Revolutions only eat their children when the revolution betrays its own ideals and becomes something very, very different. Contrast for example the Bolshevik/Communist revolution is Russia, which ran amok and never established communism, merely a dictatorship that called itself communist without practicing any of the economic or social advocated by Karl Marx, and the American revolution, which did remain true to its ideals for the most part and did in establish a democracy in its wake.
One became a monster with an entirely different agenda than the revolution and its revolutionaries while the other did not. One did "eat its children," while the other did not.
A more accurate statement would be to say that
"Each evoluton which betray itself and its ideals had ended uyp eating its children." In which case I can see every reason to expect the Free Software movement (and hopefull the Open Source movement with which it shares some adherents) should be different.
As a corallary, I would say that if history is any lesson, and if the Open Source (or Free Software) movmements do in fact "eat their children" we can pretty much understand that, at that point, they have betrayed themselves and everything they stand for, whith only the rhetoric remaining to gloss over an entirely different, probably very detrimental, agenda.
Luckilly I don't see any evidence of anything like that happening just yet.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Obligatory Linus quote: "Eat my shorts" .. no, wait !
if there is any difference at all.
Ahhhhhhh......
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Actually Sun has owned OSI for quite a while.
After ESR posted the open letter that Java should be open source, it was only a matter of time before Sun had him booted.
If this kind of tantrum junkie is the best spokesperson the open source movement can find, they're really in trouble!
You are a bright one aren't you?
+ empire/2100-1001_3-235639.html
http://news.com.com/Gates+turns+over+reins+of+his
Come on, we all know you have a Slashdot account. Are you going to let this crap stand? We both know that the term "open source" existed before you had any involvement at all. Please step up to the plate and say so to your adoring fans.
Why do I have this feeling some anti open source troll is going to mod down all of his posts just because they know who he is?
I'm surpised slashdot posted his name like that. Especially with recent posts.
Check out Sex Tips for Geeks
Actually, the essays in this section, as well as much of his other writing, make very interesting reading. I think this one can only be found via the site-map.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
All those complaining about the OSI insisting that a licence is open-source only if they approve it forget one thing: the OSI coined the term "open source". Hard as it may be to imagine, the phrase didn't exist up to 7 or so years ago. With this in mind, their claims are somewhat justified.
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
They think that Ayn Rand farted fairy-dust.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I can imagine the exit interview...
"Don't do us any favors, OK Eric? We'll call you if we need help."
Christ, I was expecting Goatse or something but that thing is hideous.
Do NOT click the parents link! It contains spyware; GAIN and Claria. You have been warned. If you have already clicked the link, run a spyware scan using updated profiles.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
No, you were right the first time. The Open Source and Copyleft Act 2004 gives the OSI the strict duty to regulate all open source licenses, thanks to a lot of lobbying by ESR and Bruce Perens.
this still makes me laugh. And I mean laughing at him, not with him.
This is purely a hunch, but wouldn't the bill to which you refer only apply in the US? Which would mean that if the grandparent is one of the other 5.6 billion people in the world, no, he DOESN'T need osi's approval.
Stuff.
A few hours ago, I learned that I am now (at least in theory) absurdly rich.
I was at my machine, hacking, when I got email congratulating me on the success of the VA Linux Systems IPO. I was working on my latest small project -- a compiler for a special-purpose language I've designed called Scriptable Network Graphics, or SNG. SNG is an editable representation of the chunk data in a PNG. What I'm writing is a compiler/decompiler pair, so you can dump PNGs in SNG, edit the SNG, then recompile to a PNG image.
"Congratulations? That's interesting," said I to myself. "I didn't think we were going out till tomorrow." And I oughtta know; I'm on VA's Board of Directors, recruited by Larry Augustin himself to be VA's official corporate conscience, and it's a matter of public record that I hold a substantial share in the company. I tooled on over to Linux Today, chased a link -- and discovered that Larry Augustin had taken the fast option we discussed during the last Board conference call. VA had indeed gone out on NASDAQ -- and I had become worth approximately forty-one million dollars while I wasn't looking.
Well, that didn't last long. In the next two hours, VA dropped from $274 a share to close at $239, leaving me with a stake of only thirty-six million dollars. Which is still a preposterously large amount of money.
You may wonder why I am talking about this in public. The first piece of advice your friends and family will give you, if it looks like you're about to become really wealthy, is: keep it quiet. It's nobody else's business -- you don't want to look like you're gloating, and you don't want to be deluged with an endless succession of charity appeals, business propositions, long-lost best friends, and plain bald-faced mooching.
Trouble with the "keep it quiet" theory is that I've made my bucks in a very public way. When you're already a media figure, and your name is on the S-1 of a hot IPO, and email from friends and journalists starts coming in like crazy as the stock breaks first-day-gain records, playing it coy swiftly ceases to look like a viable option.
Besides, it wouldn't be fair to dissemble. I serve a community. I'm wealthy today because my efforts to spread the idea of open source on behalf of that community helped galvanize the business world, and earned the respect and the trust of a lot of hackers. Larry thought that respect was an asset worth shelling out 150,000 shares of VA for. Fairness to the hackers who made me bankable demands that I publicly acknowledge this result -- and publicly face the question of how it's going to affect my life and what I'll do with the money.
This is a question that a lot of us will be facing as open source sweeps the technology landscape. Money follows where value leads, and the mainstream business and finance world is seeing increasing value in our tribe of scruffy hackers. Red Hat and VA have created a precedent now, with their directed-shares programs designed to reward as many individual contributors as they can identify; future players aiming for community backing and a seat at the high table will have to follow suit. In this and other ways (including, for example, task markets) the wealth is going to be shared.
So while there aren't likely to be a lot more multimillion-dollar bonanzas like mine, lots of hackers are going to have to evolve answers to this question for smaller amounts that will nevertheless make a big difference to individuals; tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, enough to change your life -- or wreck it.
(Gee. Remember when the big question was "How do we make money at this?")
The first part of my answer is "I'll do nothing, until next June". Because I'm a VA board member, under SEC regulations there's a six-month lockout on the shares (a regulation designed to keep people from floating bogus offerings, cashing out, and skipping to Argentina before the share price crashes). So it's not strictly true that I'm wealthy right now. I will be wealthy in six months, unles
Is that a fault of Russians or a "dreamer" like Marx? I think a dictatoral state is the end result of any system that advocates "from each according his ability, to each according to his needs." You need a ruling class to start handing out rations as no one has a right to private property.
... the communal communes of Spain in the early 20th century. The country as a whole was a dual system, half capitalist, half communist. The local communists were very democratic and outcompeted their capitalist competitors (Note: communism != centrally planned).
Not any more than you need a ruling class for capitalism to work (someone owns the land, someone works for someone else).
There has been at least one working communist system that was inherently democratic
Both Washington and Moscow had strong interest in undermining this particular example of communism. Washington because it showed communism could outcompete capitalism under the right circumstances (small, democratic, self-organized communes and cooperatives trading with one another) and Moscow because it undermined their argument that communism required authoritarianism to work (this was particularly troublesome as the Spanish democratic variant was working far better than stalinism ever did).
The Spanish government coopted the communists into their system legally, then modified the laws to make them uncompetative and ultimately illegal. Kind of like what is happening to the internet vis-a-vis the expanded copyright laws today.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
This is purely a hunch, but wouldn't the bill to which you refer only apply in the US?
No. This Act was unanimously passed by the Open Source Initiative, which recognises no jurisdictional limitations.
Are the mods asleep at the wheel? Drunk? Or just forgot to mod parten up?
I use Fedora Core 2 + Mozilla as non-root, didn't seemed to have installed anything.
This sig is the express property of someone.
If you look at this and some of the other drivel on his site you see quickly that a maturing open source community is just purging the freaks.
The open source movement has no problem with advocating for software that is not "open source". This movement's philosophy champions a development methodology aimed chiefly at businesses. When you focus on criteria where you can't always excel, like technological innovation, you sometimes have to stump for things that won't qualify for the imprimateur of your own organization.
Free software proponents, by contrast, champion a different philosophy: all computer users deserve the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify computer software. Thus, software freedom is primary, not technical innovation or faster and less buggy development. Hence, free software proponents never have the ironic situation of advocating the use of software they don't agree with. From the perspective of the older free software movement, the goals of the open source movement are nice as far as they go but they don't go far enough.
Digital Citizen
Who is this "Eric Raymond"? I thought Oscar Goldman was in charge at the OSI. Did he retire? The least they could have done is give Dr. Rudy Wells or Steve Austin the job as a sinecure.
The rudimentary math shows he was granted 150k shares, which at today's prices would put him in a pretax gain of $300k.
I see you half got my joke :)
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
Huh. Interesting to reread ESR's Take My Job, Please! essay, now that he is stepping aside.
Up till now, OSI has pretty much treated freedom as a non issue or a side issue in the FOSS community. I think this signifies a change in direction to where freedom becomes the main issue. If so, I welcome the change.
Fear, not...
ESR is 10 times the hacker then you'd ever be. Even if he is as much as a loser as you'd like him to seem.
Personally, I think they should bring back Oscar Goldman.
Giving up the title, in this case at any rate, is not the same as giving up the power. You'll find that Gates has much more power than his position would normally grant.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
BTW, this is one piece of software from Microsoft that seems to work well. But then, they did write the OS software so they SHOULD know how to check it.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Or at least, that's the way the eaters wrote the history books.
You mean, according to the abundance of documentation availabe in private and public collections? Or the vast number of eye-witness accounts recorded in private letters and notes of the era?
This whole concept of "victor writes the history books" is flawed when there is an abundance of evidence that is freely available. We can search through and discover the true stories of all of American history, because every step is documented. If you would like to dispute the work that the historians have presented, please write your own papers and cite your sources.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
There has never been a revolution of the powerless masses and there probably never will be.
I'd like to find out what you mean by "masses". My understanding is that the masses are the people who aren't in power. I guess by this definition it means that they are powerless. But then again, in a democratic society, what is power? It is the ability to make decisions. Who in a democratic society makes decisions? Why, the people do, by voting. They make decisions about who is allowed to make decisions for them. They make decisions about what kind and what form these decisions are made.
That doesn't sound 'powerless'. That sounds 'powerful'. America has been about empowering the masses and respecting their decision since the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock and the decision was made to vote for the leaders and laws.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
I was unaware that ESR had replaced Oscar Goldman as the head of the OSI. Now I hear that he is stepping down. I wonder who Steve Austin's new boss will be?
I thought Oscar Goldman was head of OSI...!
(Obscure Six MIllion DOllar Man reference....)
It was a revolution in that the system changed from top-down to bottom-up. Up until that point, general philosophy said you needed a king who had been raised since birth to lead to run a nation. Otherwise, it couldn't be done. Julius Ceaser was celebrated, along with Alexander the Great, because they were great top-down leaders.
Then along comes the idea that maybe the masses aren't so stupid as Ceaser and Alexander claimed. Maybe, in fact, they knew more about how to run a country, a city, and a village than a king who lived far away and who didn't care. If the masses aren't stupid, then they should be free to do what they wish, because they are more often right than wrong.
That was the revolution part. The revolution didn't start with a gunshot. It started with a pen, long before 1776. It isn't complete either. We're still trying to bring freedom to everyone who wants it.
The war for independence was a different yet connected matter. It was a formality to make it clear to Britain and the rest of the world that the Americans were intent on self-rule. While I think the war was great, the revolution was even greater.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
ESR, RMS, and Bruce Perens should get back together and start a family. Soft of like the movie Junior but with less muscle.
ESR will die of what is reported to the public as natural causes; RMS will flee to Mexico, where he will live for some years before being assassinated by our agents.
I take it you've never done this before?
There's no spyware installed at that link, at least I don't see anything.
Trolling is a art,
" The way i see it, it's a sign that Open Source is finally growing up. Fanatics like ESR might do good to the cause in the early stages of revolution, but in the longer run, they will always prove to be an annoyance and will be dealt with.
Methinks you'd like the whole disruptive emergent pattern to recrystalize back into the old, accepted ways and methodologies. Would make you more comfortable, yes? Not likely, though...
If you want people to listen to something or show your approval, you say "HEAR HEAR".
Russ Nelson, as in, Russ "The Angry Economist" Nelson? Well how can you go wrong with that choice?
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
I'm glad that drunken cripple is finally hobbling back to his hermit ranch.
mod parent up
Eric uber alles:
1 1# 129
http://www.ibiblio.org/esrblog/index.php?m=2003
And in case you buy into his neo-fascist belief system, here are some good rebuttals to his arguements:
http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/debunk/dBell.htm
What has he done that makes him a 'hacker'? Has he developed any useful software whatsoever? Is there any worthwhile code of his in active use? Has he done anything that suggests that he understands computer science?
My biggest problem with esr was that he couldn't seem to keep his OSI work separate from his other opinions about the proper place of women, how to treat homosexuals, etc. I respect his right to have those opinions, but I wish he would tuck them away during his very visible tenure as leader of OSI.
Russ has a fairly extreme view on libertarian economics. ("Extreme" because few people believe there should be no public liability laws -- I'd link but the archives are broken.) Fair enough; I sympathize even if I wouldn't go quite as far as he does.
My big question is: will he manage to keep his personal opinions separate from his OSI work? I do not want to hear any more OSI-related statements alluding to gun control. It's not just unprofessional, it's also a bad idea in that you may alienate people who like open source but dislike Rand.
The rest of the essay is a bit interesting -- picking apart a particular garden-path excursion.
...I'm going to hurl. That analogy was outdated and stupid when it first came out. It was made to impress nitwits and unfortunately it caught on amongst the unwashed masses and the fool became famous. I thought one bit of good that the dot bust did was that I'd never have to hear this silly paper or its author ever again. Unfortunately I was wrong.
Open Source is not a generic term. It is a term invented by the OSI and has a strict definition: oddly enough, the Open Source Definition.
If the term 'Open Source' becomes genericised, then any software you can get the source doe to - including Qmail, Microsoft Windows, and Pine - will be called 'Open Source' when it isn't.
Erm, what? I don't need anyone to "approve" my software's license :P
That's correct, you don't. Just don't call it Open Source.
If, however, you do wish to call your software Open Source, it must meet the definition of Open Source, which was created by the people who invented the term, when they invented it.
This is vitally important, or every man and his dog will call software you can get source code for (eg, Pine, Qmail, or Windows, as stated earlier) Open Source.
One of the OSI's most important tasks in the next few years is to protect the term Open Source from those who would wish for it to be abused.
One of the major points of OSS is that unlike the term 'Free Software' (which, to many people, already had another meaning - 'free software') it was a new term, and hence can be more easily defined.
Even if you're more an FS kinda guy than an OSS one, the Open Source Definition is very similar to the FSF list of Four Freedoms. Making sure people who guarantee neither Open Source nor Freedom don't come to abuse the term is in all of our interests.
1) I can't believe that on Slashdot, nobody knows what Open Source means.
2) I think ESR's a bit of a loony, as I find most right wing Americans to be. But I'm not interested in OSS so I can get along with some guy with a beard, I'm interested in it because software that's Open Source tends to be better than software that isn't. I can troubleshoot it without running into a brick wall, and it's harder to do the kinds of dodgy tricks Symantec does with security (eg, negotiating with specific spyware manufacturers to let their Antivirus not remove the apps). I get these benefits with FS too, but it's never been a moral thing: so I use the term OSS.
And yes, the guys who created the OSD have made a massive contribution to Linux. Ever had your boss ask you about some of that hip 'Open Source' stuff he read about in BusinessWeek? When was the last time you read an article about capital F Free Software?
They didn't write the Anti-Spyware Beta, they bought it off a company named Giant and rebranded it.
The DJ?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/radcliffe/
He's a fantastic DJ, but I wouldn't trust him with legal matters!
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
to the retarded looking cripple faggot midget!
Being a large shareholder is a far far higher position than CEO. As JP Morgan once said (not an exact quote, but close) "Remember, the CEO is just a hired hand".
esr is a lice ridden, mongoloid midget who rubs its tiny cock all day with its malformed, crippled claws thinking about boy's bums.
Rob stirred in his sleep, having felt a light tickling on his cheek. He moved his hand sleepily across his face and stopped when he felt warmth at his fingertips. As he slowly began to wake up a lamp flicked on, flooding Rob's bed with red light.
"Huh? Who's there? What" Rob said, slurring his words.
Again he felt a tickling on his cheek and opened his eyes. He jerked his head back.
"Motherfucker!" Rob yelled as his eyes went wide.
ESR's hairy erect penis, thin and crooked and pulsing with each heartbeat, hovered centimeters from Rob's jaw. His bushy red pubic hair bearded his red scrotum which hung low between his pale thighs.
"Hi Rob, I just got off the bus from Kansas City and decided to make a pit-stop in Holland. Hope ya don't mind!" ESR said with a childlike grin. His drooping orange mustache fluttered as his breath came in gasps.
"You sick fuck! How did you get in my house? And where's Kathleen? What did you do to my wife?"
ESR crawled closer to Rob as he took his softening shaft in his hand and began slowly jacking himself.
"Kathleen's fine, Rob!" ESR said, producing a half-full green bottle of Jaegermeister in one hand and a .44 Magnum in the other.
"Motherfucker! I'll fucking kill you!" Rob shouted.
"Now now, Rob, that will never do. You'll suck my penis to erection and then take it in your sweet little anus until it's time to dump a load of Uncle Eric's special sauce down your slick throat, and you'll like it!" ESR said.
With this ESR cocked the hammer of his gun and pointed it at Rob's mouth and began forcing his jaw open with the barrel as he poured the Jaegermeister, thick and dark and brown, into Rob's mouth. He trickled some onto his bush and penis for good measure and jammed his thin cock into Rob's mouth. Rob took it to the hilt.
"That's a good little faggot. You take all of Uncle Eric's junk and you like it!" Eric said as he began pumping his cock in and out of Rob's mouth. ESR's bulbous white gut hovered menacingly over Rob's face like a full moon and his ruddy pubes tickled Rob's nose. The gun barrel wavered at Rob's eyes.
Rob moaned as ESR grunted his pleasures into the back of Rob's throat.
"Now Rob, I want you to look me in the eyes. Look at me, Rob, look at Uncle Eric while he rides your face like a six-wheeled ATV!"
Rob's beady eyes connected with Eric's pale blue irises, tears welling in his eyelids as ESR's crotch continued its assault.
"I have with me a funnel, Rob, and you're going to take it in your ass. This old cock of mine needs a little lube and we're going to pack your rec-room full of something quite slippery!" ESR said as his eyes grew wide. He shook his bottle of Jaegermeister again as he helped Rob pull his pants off.
With a pop Eric removed his pulsating cock, slick with spit, from Rob's hungry mouth as Rob turned over onto all fours, his back arched and ass swaying in the air. ESR's little orange funnel entered Rob's anus without complaint as he began pouring the brown fluid. Rob shivered.
"Good boy, Rob. Good boy. Uncle Eric's gonna feel real good in a second. Oh!" ESR moaned as he rammed his dong home into Rob's familiar rectum. "Reeeal goooood..."
Rob cried out in pain as ESR put his full weight into each and every thrust, Rob's hairy ass-cheeks spread further and further apart with every push.
"OK, Rob, I want you to say hello to my little friend!" ESR said with a maniacal laugh. Rob hissed as he felt something cold and metal begin to enter his asshole right beside ESR's rigid cock. "What's the barrel of my .44 feel like up there, Rob?"
"I can't take this anymore! I was done with this when I moved from Ann Arbor! I just want to have a normal straight life with Kathleen, I just" Rob said through sobs and grunts as Eric continued his battering ram assault. "I just want to live a straight lifestyle and leave
Do you really think that anyone (except yourself?) on Slashdot gives two shits about something that only affects Internet Explorer for Windows? *snicker*
Dude - seriously funny! Really!
I am pretty sick of OSI after the CDDL fiasco (just blogged about it:my 'Brown Nosing' entry). Anyway, have a good day!
Because this bazaar thing was very messy, so we're going toward a more structured, cathedral-like model.
I still remember using Russ's packet drivers and trumpet to get DOS/win31 tcp/ip working. A most excellent kludge in a kludgy time of PC history! Also, good ole' ka9q/nos and many other apps used them. You kept us bandaided up until linux. Good Luck with the new post.
Jedis are stupid. If they were so powerful, why couldn't they handle counseling for a kid who missed his mom?
I'm not a huge fan of ESR, but in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, he is responsible for fetchmail, which is admittedly an extremely useful (if not particularly exciting) piece of software.
He also wrote an INTERCAL compiler for UNIX-like systems, I think. I think he also wrote a build configuration system (like menuconfig) for the Linux kernel which was ultimately rejected -- but I'll hold off on disparaging him for it, as I've never had anything accepted either, and submitting something on LKML is more than most people do.
Of course, ESR is best known for his gift of gab, not his contributed code. When he's speaking about something he actually has a cursory understanding of, he's usually capable of being quite insightful. Unfortunately, he's one of those intelligent people who believes that because his opinions are respected in one arena, he is automatically an expert in all arenae -- and he attempts frequently to back his esoteric points of view -- especially regarding homosexuality, racism, and the like -- with rather flawed logic.
Of course, ESR is only human, and just because he's been a public figure of some note doesn't mean that we should hold him to an unrealistically high standard.
He's just not particularly well rounded. Writes well, though.
Are you sure? He seems nice.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Eric's Gun Nut Page: "Yes, I cheerfully refer to myself as a gun nut." -- Eric S. Raymond.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Why does everyone keep forgetting about the most important project? I've heard that Eric went to Thailand to finally get some empirical data for his HOWTO.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Microsoft didn't write it. That may be why it works well.
This to my mind is bad news. I understand that ESR is controversial...Some people like him, and others definitely don't...but there's one area where he did the geek world a big favour...namely in the sense that from what I saw, he was the real world's answer to Louis Skolnick.
What I mean by that is that geeks traditionally are (to put it in politically correct terminology) "neurologically diverse." We seem to typically be either somewhere on the autistic spectrum (I myself was diagnosed in 1992 with a Nonverbal Learning Disorder, which is an autistic spectrum/PDD condition fairly similar to Asperger's) or to have ADHD. I've always thought that RMS's major problem as far as obtaining genuine (mainstream) relevance is concerned is the fact (at least to my mind) that he is deeply and visibly autistic, which seems to be an enormous hindrance to him when it comes to relating to other people.
ESR by comparison is/was relatively mainstream. I certainly won't say completely...but a lot moreso than RMS, and definitely moreso than is usual for the geek/hacker rank and file. In dealing with the corporate world (*especially* boomer corporates) it's absolutely vital that even if you aren't normal, you can convincingly pretend to be for extensive periods of time...which ESR evidently *is* capable of doing.
The point is that we *do* need someone like that, in order to act as a liason with the rest of the planet. Not only for those of us who genuinely can't do it, but also for those of us like RMS who I suspect probably *could* if they really tried, but who see doing so as tremendously immoral.
I understand some people don't like Raymond, and from what I've read of his writings I think I can at least suspect why that is. I think it's true that he probably *does* have an enormous ego, among other things.
But at the same time, in some ways personally I tend to see him as at least vaguely resembling the sort of person I myself would want to be if I had the courage to become self-actualised. I'm not someone customarily given to hero worship...and I'm not saying I engage in that with Raymond either, exactly...he's written things that I disagree with. But controversy about him aside, I think I have been able to see in him a lot which I admire and consider valuable...and I think as far as FOSS is concerned, he *has* made a difference. I hope that even after stepping down from this position, he'll still be willing and able to keep doing so.
I know he based it on another program, but lets be fair here: what makes fetchmail far, far better than any other similar program is its SMTP integration, which AFAIK popclient did not support. Of course, it wasn't ESR's idea, either (he admits this much) -- but he did write the code to do it. Not that this is complex in the slightest or anything.
Further, given the name popclient, I would presume that it probably only supported POP. Even if it didn't, fetchmail supports everything under the sun. But then, by ESR's own admission, he attempted to mimic Linus Torvalds in his management of the project -- something about proving his Cathedral vs Bazaar theory correct, or the like. Anyway, this means that he accepted a lot of patches and such from a lot of different people, so you could (if you wanted) make the argument that most of the code in fetchmail is not his. But then, that's true of Linus and Linux, too.
One thing is certain -- fetchmail is useful, and has been managed by him, at least. I'll give him credit for it. I don't give him credit for much else.
doubt -> doubt (n)
doubt + less -> without doubt (adj)
doubt + less + ly -> describes an action or adjective which acts or describes something in a manner lacking doubt (adverb of manner, constructed from an adjective, as in "hungrily").
In this case, we take the adjective "informative" and use an adverb to describe how it is infomative; in this sense, I indicate that I do not doubt that it is informative -- in fact, the construction is inherently passive as it deemphasizes the agent doubting, so the implication is that "one" would not doubt that it is informative. In other words, we are speaking of the response that I/no one doubts is quite informative -- but we can use just three words: the doubtlessly informative response.
Got it?
Yeah, I know, I love grammar. Linguist geek and all.
And fetchmail is well-known for being insecure and unreliable. Better alternatives exist.
We treated the Indians poorly, but they were doing worse to themselves.
Let's start with human sacrifice, daily, of their enemies. Have we done anything like this? I'm sorry, but using germ warfare hardly compares to cutting the heart out of a living human.
Let's move on to the constant wars among the Indians. Unlike Americans, which fought wars to defend themselves, Indians fought war for fun. We took their land from them because they attacked us first. Did we distinguish between the peaceful ones and not so peaceful? Not very well. I would've preferred the Cherokee stay put, and if you read your history books, so did the Supreme Court.
We treat the Indians like kings nowadays. We pay them a King's ransom every year, we allow them to operate above the law, and we look past their problems in adopting our society.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.