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Interview: Ask Eric Raymond What You Will
Author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar and The Art of Unix Programming, Eric S.Raymond (ESR) has long been an important spokesperson for the open source movement. It's been a while since we talked to the co-founder of the Open Source Initiative so ESR has agreed to give us some of his time and answer your questions. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
What are your feelings about protocols and file formats and keeping them open? Where do the efforts to keep protocols and file formats open and accessible to others fall on your list of priorities?
What do you think of Slashdot beta?
What's your opinion of the damage done to the Internet by the NSA scandal, and potentially by, the Comcast TWC merger?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Did you get to cash out before the crash? After you infamous gloating here, http://news-beta.slashdot.org/story/99/12/10/0821224/esr-writes-on-surprised-by-wealth, inquiring minds want to know.
Do you still deny a link between HIV and the disease known as AIDS?
Do you still blame Alan Turing for his fate? So have you become a total crackpot since September 11th, or was it something that was always sorta brewing under the surface.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
So how annoyed are you that RMS got to do an interview a week before you did.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Do you consider the widespread global adoption of the Linux-based Android operating system to be a victory for Open Source, or a danger to the cause?
it's been almost 20 years since your write tCatB...i gave it a quick read and thought, "well, it *is* dated now, isn't it?" altho i am old enough to remember when its' ideas were pretty cutting edge.
given the current state of software development (ie the ease of use of PHP and the fact that, without a doubt, the cathedral model has won), what would you either like to change or add to your original thesis?
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Some background: ESR changed portions of the Jargon File to reflect his nutty personal politics, there was a predictable shitstorm, and since then ESR took his Jargon File and went home, no more updates.
It permeates everything you write: the moral assuredness that You Are Right. I'm all in favor of positing that a position someone takes is the right one -- that's human nature. But your whole "I speak for the hackers" tone, wherein you seem to feel the need to put your views forward as representing others', puzzles me. I give, as a case-in-point, your "Sex Tips for Geeks" as exhibit A, but, really, most any of your writings -- most definitely including your handling of The Jargon File, as well as your stance on homosexuality -- qualify. Care to comment?
As a long time "Unix philosophy" advocate, and in the light of the announced switch to it by Debian, Ubuntu, and basically every other major Linux distribution, what do you think of systemd, and the tight vertical integration it intends to bring as a standard plumbing for (most of) all Linux distributions?
When you wrote "How to ask questions" did you have any idea how big it would be? Or how long it would be relevent?
:)
And how do you feel that your most referenced piece of work is a howto for the clueless?
I recall reading (and re-reading on occasion) the Halloween Documents. Have you written anything regarding any other opponents to OSS, or perhaps a look back on them and see what the end effect of Microsoft's attempts did long term?
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
One of the issues w/ Open Source has been the freedom to redistribute software downstream - be it just binaries, just source or any combination of the 2. Do you think there are any good ways for software companies who make their software open source to prevent their customers from effectively becoming their competitors - by giving away or selling cheaper what they were sold? Or is the only alternative going for a shared-source approach, as opposed to open source, where redistribution can be explicitly prohibited?
Hi, there is currently some debate about the many eyes theory over on HNews (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7342352) about why it's a fallacious argument, but in my view they have it all wrong, in that a core component of Linus's Law is that the amount of code is directly inverse to the amount of eyes that can hit all of that code (or a significant percentage).
Therefore, in my eyes it is the problem of code bloat that is undermining the open source movement more than anything. For example, the Linux kernel is now at, what, 10mil+ lines of code? That's insane. Minix 3, on the other hand, is at ~15k?
What are your thoughts on this problem?
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
So it seems these days the most effective method of DRM is a network interface, like that used by Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc... You cannot run your own instance of Gmail or Facebook, and you certainly cannot see or modify the code. At the same time all these companies are pressuring us to push our data into their servers by not supporting or coming up with solutions that let us continue to control/manage our data on our own machines and private networks. What can open source do to stem that tide? What about open source licensing? Could webkit or mozilla have slowed down the encroachment of Chrom/ium and its pro-Google agenda if it had more defensive licensing terms like something similar to the GPL? How do we convince hackers to hack on open-source 'website programs', like an open Gmail or an open Facebook (e.g., Diaspora)?
--"You are your own God"--
Your comments in The Art of Unix Programming about Apple/Mac developers being diametrically opposed to Unix developers in development style and emphases (designing simple, user-friendly interfaces from the outside in) were quite interesting. I am wondering about your perspective on Apple now. My interest is specifically in Apple's contributions to open-source (WebKit and LLVM, chiefly) and your take on those. It seems to me that Apple has done quite a bit to foster an alternative ecosystem to the GNU environment, for instance in FreeBSD's adoption of clang as their default compiler; and also it seems to to me that WebKit has supplanted Gecko as the most widely used browser framework. Curious about your viewpoint here.
If I had to guess the most used number in the history of man, I would think 1 and 0 would be close to tied for first.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Your stance on AGW seems to deny the error-correcting features of the scientific method.
So which do you think is more likely: that AGW-deniers are primarily politically-motivated and don't give a crap about simple facts (like the greenhouse effect of CO2) or that the scientific method is deeply flawed?