6 ms·

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 again

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.

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.