5 ms·

I know ESR is not necessarily the most loved person in the OSS/FOSS development communities these days, along with RMS and, heck, even Brice Perens and Ian Murd

I know ESR is not necessarily the most loved person in the OSS/FOSS development communities these days, along with RMS and, heck, even Brice Perens and Ian Murdock in some circles, but I got into free software because of these guys. I had paid for compilers for DOS, and then Windows and then a new one came along and, etc, etc. My searches for free C compilers led me to GCC, which led me to GNU and Linux and ultimately to a lot of writing by the above individuals. I am hardly unique in this respect so love them or hate them, ESR, and so many others that have been there since the early days have made huge contributions to free software and I for one am still grateful to this day. Here's to another 19 years!

Spooky23 10y ago
Same here. I was commuting to university about 45 minutes and I ended up either stuck in an hot, overcrowded dungeon of a computer lab or on an unreliable 19.2k modem at home and Telix to do my coursework. Enter Linux... I bought some white label Red Hat disks from cheap bytes (or something similar), which let me do about 90% of what I needed to do on my PC.
pron 10y ago
I find it a bit chilling that you put ESR alongside RMS. RMS highlights the political aspects of software; ESR is just your run-of-the-mill disgusting internet misogynist[1], homophobe[2] and xenophobe[3] who once advocated open source. [1]: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6907 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6907 [2]: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=26 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=26 [1]: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=129 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=129
- smhenderson 10y ago
  OK, fair enough. I thought about putting in a comment about how much I disagree with ESR on most things these days. But this paper came out before he started using his sudden exposure as a soap box. I was trying to keep things centered on the spirit of F/OSS as I saw it when I was much younger and way more interested in code and systems than politics. But since we opened that can now, yes, homophobic, racist writing based on a flawed understanding of libertarian-ism and it's worst qualities have done a lot to dampen my opinion of him in the last 10 years or so... RMS I still read and tend to agree with even though he is just as maligned in some modern communities as ESR, just for very different reasons.
- Alex3917 10y ago
  > ESR is just your run-of-the-mill disgusting internet misogynist, homophobe and xenophobe To be fair, he was pretty representative of Internet culture in the 90s. For whatever harms the commercialization of the web has caused, at least there's been a clear shift away from that as the dominant culture.
- johnbm 10y ago
  "Misogyny": warning people about false accusations. "Homophobia": talking about pedophilia in the Catholic Church. "Xenophobia": discussing human biodiversity and empirical facts about populations. Do you think people still take these blanket condemnations seriously? They just make everyone else go and look, and see how much bullshit you're peddling.

Spooky23 10y ago

Same here. I was commuting to university about 45 minutes and I ended up either stuck in an hot, overcrowded dungeon of a computer lab or on an unreliable 19.2k modem at home and Telix to do my coursework. Enter Linux... I bought some white label Red Hat disks from cheap bytes (or something similar), which let me do about 90% of what I needed to do on my PC.

pron 10y ago

I find it a bit chilling that you put ESR alongside RMS. RMS highlights the political aspects of software; ESR is just your run-of-the-mill disgusting internet misogynist[1], homophobe[2] and xenophobe[3] who once advocated open source. [1]: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6907 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6907 [2]: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=26 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=26 [1]: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=129 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=129

smhenderson 10y ago
OK, fair enough. I thought about putting in a comment about how much I disagree with ESR on most things these days. But this paper came out before he started using his sudden exposure as a soap box. I was trying to keep things centered on the spirit of F/OSS as I saw it when I was much younger and way more interested in code and systems than politics. But since we opened that can now, yes, homophobic, racist writing based on a flawed understanding of libertarian-ism and it's worst qualities have done a lot to dampen my opinion of him in the last 10 years or so... RMS I still read and tend to agree with even though he is just as maligned in some modern communities as ESR, just for very different reasons.
Alex3917 10y ago
> ESR is just your run-of-the-mill disgusting internet misogynist, homophobe and xenophobe To be fair, he was pretty representative of Internet culture in the 90s. For whatever harms the commercialization of the web has caused, at least there's been a clear shift away from that as the dominant culture.
johnbm 10y ago
"Misogyny": warning people about false accusations. "Homophobia": talking about pedophilia in the Catholic Church. "Xenophobia": discussing human biodiversity and empirical facts about populations. Do you think people still take these blanket condemnations seriously? They just make everyone else go and look, and see how much bullshit you're peddling.