7 ms·
I was under the impression that he wrote fetchmail, but according to wikipedia he took over a previous package and renamed it fetchmail. So AFAIK, he's notable
by phjesusthatguy3 10y ago
I was under the impression that he wrote fetchmail, but according to wikipedia he took over a previous package and renamed it fetchmail. So AFAIK, he's notable because he said so.
Yes, I know I'm nobody but that doesn't mean I can't call bullshit when I smell it.
- jcoffland 10y agoThere is little doubt that ESR is notable. He is best known as the writer of essays about Open-Source such as The Cathedral and the Bazaar and The Magic Cauldron as well as others on many topics including gun rights. He suffers from cerebral palsy but has not let that hold him back. He is also known for being contentious. Arguably, his philosophical contributions are more valuable than his code contributions.
- mcguire 10y agoHe is also the incarnation of the god Pan [1] and a sexual tyrannosaurus (and relationship advice columnist)[2]. As get as I remember, his philosophical contributions primarily involve being in the right place at the right time, when people were searching for the reason that Linux was taking over the world, and having something to do with convincing Netscape to go open source. [1] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/dancing.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/dancing.html [2] http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/sextips/ http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/sextips/
- thehardsphere 10y agoI don't know why this is being downvoted. Whether you like ESR or not, he is notable for all of these things. Plus founding the Open Source Initiative. And he maintains GPSD. One can debate whether these things are all valuable, and how any value they may have may fit into how to judge him as a person along with his flaws, but they are notable.
- coldtea 10y ago>Plus founding the Open Source Initiative. Which is notable itself (OSI) because?
- thehardsphere 10y agoBecause they basically invented the term "open source." Prior to them the biggest thing in popularizing what we now call "open source" was RMS and the Free Software Foundation, which lots of people were turned off by. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Initiative https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Initiative
- tptacek 10y agoNo, the biggest thing that popularized what we now call "open source" was (obviously) Linux --- which was the wave OSI caught.
- thehardsphere 10y agoI meant the literal words "open source" as the term to refer to the practices that created software like Linux.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- coldtea 10y ago>There is little doubt that ESR is notable. He is best known as the writer of essays about Open-Source such as The Cathedral and the Bazaar and The Magic Cauldron Yes, but one could hardly call those great accomplishments that stood the test of time. It was a puff piece based on the popular at the time starry eyed look at OSS development, that caught on (then), because it fit with the overblown hype for community "bazaar" style software development prevalent in the late 90s.
- jcoffland 10y agoNonsense. Those are still seminal documents of the Open-Source movement.
- coldtea 10y agoBecause modern open source developers care for those notions? At best there's only historical value in them. Contrast with something like the Mythical Man-Month or SICP that new generations discover again and again. Plus, ESR's documents have been debunked in their claimed benefits of the bazaar style time and again (plus the whole end of "linux on the desktop" dream -- again, meant by those believing in it as Linux-based distros being a major desktop OS player to overtake MS, not in the "works for me and I've installed it to my parents too" sense).