Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Interview: Ask Eric Raymond What You Will

Posted by samzenpus on from the go-ahead-and-ask dept.

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.

10 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. What about protocols? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  2. In all seriousness... by iluvcapra · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I believe, but cannot prove, that global “AIDS” is a whole cluster of unrelated diseases all of which have been swept under a single rug for essentially political reasons, and that the identification of HIV as the sole pathogen is likely to go down as one of the most colossal blunders in the history of medicine.

    Do you still deny a link between HIV and the disease known as AIDS?

    You picked an extremely bad example there; Turing was atypical in a way that damages your case. If you examine the actual circumstances of Turing’s exposure, you’ll discover that he was remarkably and willfully self-destructive about it. Outed himself, under circumstances where he could easily have covered and (as I read it) the cop was trying to look the other way. Still, I’m not “pro” Turing’s suicide, just refusing to blame anyone else for it. He made his choice and died. End of story.

    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.
    1. Re:In all seriousness... by iluvcapra · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We can go on like this for days, by the way.

      In all seriousness, why is this guy still a thing in the Open Source movement? He wrote a few books in the 90s, very good ones, but he's been irrelevant for years and he's a nut. He has nothing to offer.

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
    2. Re:In all seriousness... by Alomex · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So have you become a total crackpot since September 11th, or was it something that was always sorta brewing under the surface.

      It was always brewing under the surface.

      He is a blind follower of extreme libertarian ideas. For example, a long time ago in a personal discussion I showed him how under the specific libertarian rules he was suggesting I could buy all the land around a person's house and starve them to death since they couldn't leave. He didn't bat an eye. He kept insisting that "free market rules" wouldn't allow this, as if by magic, rather than rethinking his simplistic position.

      Frankly ESR is an embarrassment to the open source movement.

    3. Re:In all seriousness... by fsck-beta · · Score: 4, Informative

      What has ESR done in the last decade for the open source community? Well he has spread a lot of ignorant and hurtful ideas outside of the open source community...

    4. Re:In all seriousness... by ESR · · Score: 4, Informative

      OK, let's squash some of this nonsense right now.

      I never believed the 2010 Haiti Erthquake was caused by a voodoo curse, and I'm astonished that anyone interpreted that post in that way. What I found anthropologically interesting is that something like Robertson's "satanic" invocation seems actually to have taken place. Not actually "satanic", but within Robertson's impoverished terms of reference that's about the only way he could describe an invocation of the loa.

      I believe, and have repeatedly said, that the supposed "scientific consensus" on CAGW is not a conspiracy but an error cascade. I think most scientists are honestly trying to do right, but have been overly credulous about data and models that have been (and continue to be) fraudulently manipulated by a tiny minority of them. Those of you who think this makes me some sort of nut are going to have some explaining to do when measured GAT drops out of the bottom of the IPCC's 95% confidence band, which looks set to happen before the end of 2014.

      I might reply to some of these other questions at more length, but these two deserved to be dispatched immediately

      --
      >>esr>>
  3. So... by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  4. Re:Slashdot Beta by i+kan+reed · · Score: 4, Informative

    Fine, taking a karma hit to provide one curious person an answer, then:

    http://soylentnews.org/

  5. Why the attitude? by Slartibartfast · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  6. systemd by Canek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?