He's Eric S. Raymond (widely known as ESR)[1], a major contributor to and early public advocate of the open-source community[2], originator and maintainer of much enduring 80s and 90s hacker humour[3], sometimes shit-disturber[4], and libertarian borderline crank[5].
[5] ...not really, he's far more balanced than RMS. He's a guns-and-crypto nut, and defends his position well.
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That he's so starstruck by contact with Knuth surprises me -- occupying, as they do for me, roughly equal mindshare in the category of "old-school computer celebrities", I figured they'd just know each-other. I guess I don't really have any model of intra-celebrity social diffusion, and that category needs to be more granular.
That he's so starstruck by contact with Knuth surprises me -- occupying, as they do for me, roughly equal mindshare in the category of "old-school computer celebrities"
ESR is to Knuth what Sarah Palin is to Milton Friedman.
Oh, I know who he is. I occasionally peep at his blog in the way one would glance at a train-wreck before passing along.
And I don't see anything in his recent posts that would lead Knuth to conclude that he's 'doing lots of real important stuff'. The language alone sounds odd.
I still think its possible that someone is just trolling him - and certainly while he seems starstruck to receive a mail from Knuth's secretary - he's boasted before about receiving emails from Knuth.
Well specifically, he's the maintainer of INTERCAL[1], an esoteric/outright evil programming language that, from his request (if I'm not being too credulous; it's at least plausible), Knuth must find amusing. Of course he's not a Computer Scientist on the level of Knuth, but my awareness of him, at least, is as an important cultural figure in computer-aware politics (from back when this was a distinguishable perspective), and a curator of a significant chunk of the culture of hackers from a formative era, which they were both a part of, that might otherwise be left abandoned. I'd hesitate to frame him as appreciable as a philosopher to Knuth's scientist, because he's a hacker who's also made real contributions to code that is still in use today; but his essay 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar'[2], at the very least, was an important text in laying down, and communicating to those who may not have previously understood, an open source philosophy that we take as a given position today.
I dunno, I'm just surprised to see the lack of recognition apparent in a thread on Hacker News about someone who I think of as a notably important figure, a hacker elder. I'm not from that era, maybe I just read too much Slashdot back in the day.
I dunno, I'm just surprised to see the lack of recognition apparent in a thread on Hacker News about someone who I think of as a notably important figure, a hacker elder. I'm not from that era, maybe I just read too much Slashdot back in the day.
I think a lot of people are turned off by esr because of his arrogance and ego.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond
[2] http://catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-bazaar/
[3] http://catb.org/jargon/
[4] http://catb.org/~esr/halloween/
[5] ...not really, he's far more balanced than RMS. He's a guns-and-crypto nut, and defends his position well.
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That he's so starstruck by contact with Knuth surprises me -- occupying, as they do for me, roughly equal mindshare in the category of "old-school computer celebrities", I figured they'd just know each-other. I guess I don't really have any model of intra-celebrity social diffusion, and that category needs to be more granular.