6 ms·

Could you elaborate on why you hold a distasteful attitude towards this person? Just curious.

by abvr 7y ago

codezero 7y ago
Have a quick read of Wiki or google and make your own conclusions. From my POV I appreciate his historical contributions but he’s been pretty aggressively against inclusion in tech. Has said a lot of misogynistic and anti-gay things and is very unapologetic about anything he’s said or done. He wants free/open source community to be like it was in the 90s again, and seems pretty anti-progress in anything that’s softer than code. That’s my 2 cents but everyone has their own interpretation.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Rational Wiki has a pretty accurate article about him. But it's not up to date with all his racist tweets. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond Although WikiQuote has some but not all of them (when quoting him be sure to put an attribution lest somebody think you're saying those words): https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond "In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes; can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color." -Eric S Raymond: http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.php?p=129 http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.php?p=129 "A clash of civilizations driven by the failure of Islamic/Arab culture (though I would stress the problem of the Islamic commandment to jihad more than he does). I think he [Steven den Beste] is also right to say that our long-term objective must be to break, crush and eventually destroy this culture, because we can't live on the same planet with people who both carry those memes and have access to weapons of mass destruction. They will hate us and seek to destroy us not for what we've done but for what we are." -Eric S Raymond: http://armedndangerous.blogspot.com/2002_09_15_armedndangerous_archive.html#81815163 http://armedndangerous.blogspot.com/2002_09_15_armedndangero... "When I hear the words "social responsibility", I want to reach for my gun." -Eric S Raymond When receiving an award from an organization called Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. "Geeks Win: A survey of the oddballs who write the codes that make the 21st-century world go round". The New York Times Book Review: p. BR18. 4 November 2001. ISSN 03624331. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Serial_Number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Serial_...
  - codezero 7y ago
    Thanks, this is an even better summary than my poor recollections and quick wiki summary, which leaves out a ton of stuff.
  - qazpot 7y ago
    The 12-50 statistics happens to be fact, I do not know how pointing that out is racist. Also ESR seems to be making the point that violent crime is result of low IQ instead of skin color. A lot of people including Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris etc. have pointed out the dangers of islam and why in modern times it is the possibly the most dangerous religion. That does not make them or ESR an islamophobe.
    - devtul 7y ago
      I find it distressing to hear people pushing the idea of ignoring data. As imperfect as they might be, research is our best effort of making sense of things as they are and making decisions based on our best sense of the facts.
    - DonHopkins 7y ago
      Speaking of violent crime, here's a quote from the guy who threatened Bruce Perens' life, then tried to excuse it by explaining he was only trying to defame him: "When I hear the words "social responsibility", I want to reach for my gun." -Eric S Raymond
    - BeetleB 7y ago
      >A lot of people including Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris etc. have pointed out the dangers of islam and why in modern times it is the possibly the most dangerous religion. That does not make them or ESR an islamophobe. Well, Sam Harris did get into trouble for promoting racial profiling for terrorism. In any case, what I remember from ESR's blog (been about a decade since I read it), he did have a stance similar to "If you claim to be Muslim, I will assume you are in favor of X unless you make a statement renouncing it" (where X was something related to terrorism, etc). Ditto for famous Muslim figures - requiring a public statement for them to be OK in his book. Things like "If the Imam of your mosque is not denouncing terrorism every Friday then he is likely a closet terrorist supporter" (like they don't have anything else to preach about in villages in Indonesia?). He also did not welcome dialogue on the topic. When someone would post a comment confronting him on his blog, he pretty much said "It's my blog and I can say what I want - you are just a guest here, and I delete comments I don't like," While it's his right to do so, it's not exactly the attitude of someone looking for disconfirming perspectives or dialogue. (In fact, I think most of his horrible stuff were when responding to comments on his blog, not the actual blog posts). Not sure he still has those posts up on his blog. Personally, I think he's a horrible person. However, I'm against an outright ban of his stuff on HN. He was an important figure in the free software world, and did make very useful contributions with all the documentation he wrote.
rodan- 7y ago
Eric Raymond has some questionable beliefs in my opinion, and this is likely what OP is referring to. I'm a big fan of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. But currently Eric Raymond has come out as a climate change denier, a racist, and also has pushed some odd conspiracy theories.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  And he hijacked the Hacker's Dictionary and proceeded to inject a bunch of his ideological words and definitions in, that in no way represent the hacker community around the early ARPANET and MIT-AI lab from which it came. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/mit-ai-lab-tourist-policy-f73b77075631 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/mit-ai-lab-tourist-policy-f73... And as if hijacking the Hacker's Dictionary wasn't enough, he tried to hijack and corrupt the very meaning of the word "hacker" itself, by presuming to define what a hacker is, by preaching to people about how to become a hacker, by blatantly misrepresenting himself as a great hacker and respected leader of the open source community, even though his programming chops are lackluster and outdated, his social skills are deceptive and manipulative, and his hacker spirit is mean, vindictive, and envious of RMS. And then there's his death threat to Bruce Perens that he tried to excuse by explaining that he was only trying to "defame" him. In 1999, Debian developer Bruce Perens published an "email threat" that he allegedly received from Raymond. Raymond then "clarified" that he only meant to defame Perens. From this we can assume that he is batshit insane and will fucking kill and or write to anyone that says anything about him or his software. If you are lucky you might get an O'Rielly book about you. https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/1999/04/msg00623.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/1999/04/msg00623.html To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: email threat From: bruce@perens.com Date: 5 Apr 1999 22:48:42 -0000 Message-id: <19990405224842.2386.qmail@perens.com> Today I received the following threat in e-mail from Eric Raymond. The message was copied to the Silicon Valley Linux User's Group officers, who you may consult regarding its authenticity. The police have been notified. Because I know that Eric is a firearms enthusiast, for my own protection, I feel the best strategy is for me to publicize the threat widely. Thanks Bruce Perens > Damn straight I took it personally. And if you ever again behave like > that kind of disruptive asshole in public, insult me, and jeopardize > the interests of our entire tribe, I'll take it just as personally -- > and I will find a way to make you regret it. Watch your step. The irony of Eric S Raymond threatening someone else for behaving "like that kind of disruptive asshole in public" is rich -- very rich. https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/bruce-perens-dead https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/bruce-perens-dead https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/2 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/2 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/3 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/3 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/4 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/4 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/5 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/5 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/6 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/6 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/7 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/7 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/8 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/8 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/9 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/9
knd775 7y ago
He's an outspoken misogynist and homophobe.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  And has a long unrepentant well documented track record of racism and islamophobia and climate change denial. And he's made his career by trying to destroy RMS's life's work, instead of doing anything constructive. I could go on. Source: I've known him since the early 80's.
  - qazpot 7y ago
    > And he's made his career by trying to destroy RMS's life's work What are you referring to ?
    - DonHopkins 7y ago
      I will give other people a chance to respond first, and for you to practice your google-fu, before turning the firehose of historical facts on you. There is a lot of evidence out there.
    - BeetleB 7y ago
      I don't know what commenter was writing about, but he often played the "RMS is an extremist," card and would position himself as the sane person. Some people didn't like that, even though RMS is an extremist. I think many people (including me) got the sense that he was being manipulative to gain power. Other than that, every once in a while he makes an annoying jab at RMS, and in at least one case, I felt he was grossly misrepresenting something RMS had said in order to gain more support for his own agenda.

Could you elaborate on why you hold a distasteful attitude towards this person? Just curious.

by abvr 7y ago

Could you elaborate on why you hold a distasteful attitude towards this person? Just curious.

Have a quick read of Wiki or google and make your own conclusions. From my POV I appreciate his historical contributions but he’s been pretty aggressively against inclusion in tech. Has said a lot of misogynistic and anti-gay things and is very unapologetic about anything he’s said or done. He wants free/open source community to be like it was in the 90s again, and seems pretty anti-progress in anything that’s softer than code. That’s my 2 cents but everyone has their own interpretation.

DonHopkins 7y ago
Rational Wiki has a pretty accurate article about him. But it's not up to date with all his racist tweets. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond Although WikiQuote has some but not all of them (when quoting him be sure to put an attribution lest somebody think you're saying those words): https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond "In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes; can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color." -Eric S Raymond: http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.php?p=129 http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.php?p=129 "A clash of civilizations driven by the failure of Islamic/Arab culture (though I would stress the problem of the Islamic commandment to jihad more than he does). I think he [Steven den Beste] is also right to say that our long-term objective must be to break, crush and eventually destroy this culture, because we can't live on the same planet with people who both carry those memes and have access to weapons of mass destruction. They will hate us and seek to destroy us not for what we've done but for what we are." -Eric S Raymond: http://armedndangerous.blogspot.com/2002_09_15_armedndangerous_archive.html#81815163 http://armedndangerous.blogspot.com/2002_09_15_armedndangero... "When I hear the words "social responsibility", I want to reach for my gun." -Eric S Raymond When receiving an award from an organization called Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. "Geeks Win: A survey of the oddballs who write the codes that make the 21st-century world go round". The New York Times Book Review: p. BR18. 4 November 2001. ISSN 03624331. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Serial_Number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Serial_...
- codezero 7y ago
  Thanks, this is an even better summary than my poor recollections and quick wiki summary, which leaves out a ton of stuff.
- qazpot 7y ago
  The 12-50 statistics happens to be fact, I do not know how pointing that out is racist. Also ESR seems to be making the point that violent crime is result of low IQ instead of skin color. A lot of people including Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris etc. have pointed out the dangers of islam and why in modern times it is the possibly the most dangerous religion. That does not make them or ESR an islamophobe.
  - devtul 7y ago
    I find it distressing to hear people pushing the idea of ignoring data. As imperfect as they might be, research is our best effort of making sense of things as they are and making decisions based on our best sense of the facts.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    Speaking of violent crime, here's a quote from the guy who threatened Bruce Perens' life, then tried to excuse it by explaining he was only trying to defame him: "When I hear the words "social responsibility", I want to reach for my gun." -Eric S Raymond
  - BeetleB 7y ago
    >A lot of people including Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris etc. have pointed out the dangers of islam and why in modern times it is the possibly the most dangerous religion. That does not make them or ESR an islamophobe. Well, Sam Harris did get into trouble for promoting racial profiling for terrorism. In any case, what I remember from ESR's blog (been about a decade since I read it), he did have a stance similar to "If you claim to be Muslim, I will assume you are in favor of X unless you make a statement renouncing it" (where X was something related to terrorism, etc). Ditto for famous Muslim figures - requiring a public statement for them to be OK in his book. Things like "If the Imam of your mosque is not denouncing terrorism every Friday then he is likely a closet terrorist supporter" (like they don't have anything else to preach about in villages in Indonesia?). He also did not welcome dialogue on the topic. When someone would post a comment confronting him on his blog, he pretty much said "It's my blog and I can say what I want - you are just a guest here, and I delete comments I don't like," While it's his right to do so, it's not exactly the attitude of someone looking for disconfirming perspectives or dialogue. (In fact, I think most of his horrible stuff were when responding to comments on his blog, not the actual blog posts). Not sure he still has those posts up on his blog. Personally, I think he's a horrible person. However, I'm against an outright ban of his stuff on HN. He was an important figure in the free software world, and did make very useful contributions with all the documentation he wrote.

rodan- 7y ago

Eric Raymond has some questionable beliefs in my opinion, and this is likely what OP is referring to. I'm a big fan of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. But currently Eric Raymond has come out as a climate change denier, a racist, and also has pushed some odd conspiracy theories.

DonHopkins 7y ago
And he hijacked the Hacker's Dictionary and proceeded to inject a bunch of his ideological words and definitions in, that in no way represent the hacker community around the early ARPANET and MIT-AI lab from which it came. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/mit-ai-lab-tourist-policy-f73b77075631 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/mit-ai-lab-tourist-policy-f73... And as if hijacking the Hacker's Dictionary wasn't enough, he tried to hijack and corrupt the very meaning of the word "hacker" itself, by presuming to define what a hacker is, by preaching to people about how to become a hacker, by blatantly misrepresenting himself as a great hacker and respected leader of the open source community, even though his programming chops are lackluster and outdated, his social skills are deceptive and manipulative, and his hacker spirit is mean, vindictive, and envious of RMS. And then there's his death threat to Bruce Perens that he tried to excuse by explaining that he was only trying to "defame" him. In 1999, Debian developer Bruce Perens published an "email threat" that he allegedly received from Raymond. Raymond then "clarified" that he only meant to defame Perens. From this we can assume that he is batshit insane and will fucking kill and or write to anyone that says anything about him or his software. If you are lucky you might get an O'Rielly book about you. https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/1999/04/msg00623.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/1999/04/msg00623.html To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: email threat From: bruce@perens.com Date: 5 Apr 1999 22:48:42 -0000 Message-id: <19990405224842.2386.qmail@perens.com> Today I received the following threat in e-mail from Eric Raymond. The message was copied to the Silicon Valley Linux User's Group officers, who you may consult regarding its authenticity. The police have been notified. Because I know that Eric is a firearms enthusiast, for my own protection, I feel the best strategy is for me to publicize the threat widely. Thanks Bruce Perens > Damn straight I took it personally. And if you ever again behave like > that kind of disruptive asshole in public, insult me, and jeopardize > the interests of our entire tribe, I'll take it just as personally -- > and I will find a way to make you regret it. Watch your step. The irony of Eric S Raymond threatening someone else for behaving "like that kind of disruptive asshole in public" is rich -- very rich. https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/bruce-perens-dead https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/bruce-perens-dead https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/2 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/2 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/3 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/3 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/4 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/4 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/5 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/5 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/6 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/6 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/7 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/7 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/8 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/8 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/9 https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/9

knd775 7y ago

He's an outspoken misogynist and homophobe.

DonHopkins 7y ago
And has a long unrepentant well documented track record of racism and islamophobia and climate change denial. And he's made his career by trying to destroy RMS's life's work, instead of doing anything constructive. I could go on. Source: I've known him since the early 80's.
- qazpot 7y ago
  > And he's made his career by trying to destroy RMS's life's work What are you referring to ?
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    I will give other people a chance to respond first, and for you to practice your google-fu, before turning the firehose of historical facts on you. There is a lot of evidence out there.
  - BeetleB 7y ago
    I don't know what commenter was writing about, but he often played the "RMS is an extremist," card and would position himself as the sane person. Some people didn't like that, even though RMS is an extremist. I think many people (including me) got the sense that he was being manipulative to gain power. Other than that, every once in a while he makes an annoying jab at RMS, and in at least one case, I felt he was grossly misrepresenting something RMS had said in order to gain more support for his own agenda.