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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

> ESR captures all the aspects fairly well

I'm gonna stop you right there. The idea that ESR is the final authority on what the "hacker ethos" is or should be is much more offensively wrong than anything in this article.

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I didn't say ESR is an authority, just that he described it well. If you have a disagreement with what he wrote there, you should explain your disagreement, rather than attacking him as a person.

Taken as a whole, ESR is an embarrassment. But the parent didn't say that we should consider ESR an authority, final or otherwise. They only expressed their opinion that those words (penned by ESR) "captures all aspects fairly well".

>ESR is an embarrassment I have actually read some of his material and found your statement somewhat confusing. Is it that you dislike him as a person or is there something that I missed completely? Is there any other material that would give a clearer and perhaps more authentic explanation of these ethos (cause, frankly, I though that ESR did a good job there)? *Pardon my grammar, ESL bro.

Please forive the lenthy disclaimer/preamble: I very strongly believe that when we consider some subset of a person's words or their work - that we should treat it on its own merits, and not contaminated with tangential arguments about the person themself or their other, unrelated words, claims, works, etc.

So I mentioned my position (that he is an embarrassment) to make clear to the parent poster that I wasn't defending ESR per se - before immediately declaring that our shared distaste of ESR is not relevant to the discussion. I'm replying out of courtesy, since you asked, but I don't think discussing negative aspects of ESR is relevant to the larger topics here.

> more authentic explanation of these ethos (cause, frankly, I though that ESR did a good job there)?

I think ESR's comments on the hacker ethos are just fine. His other positions and writing in no way detracts from this. I think there are many places where ESR did 'a good job'.

> is there something that I missed completely?

I don't have any fair or balanced sources to share with you, but if you'd like to see links cherry picked by people who have a heavy anti-ESR bias, you can check out the not-so-rational "rationalwiki". I don't endorse nor agree with all that's said here, but it sheds light on why some people dislike ESR.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond#Footnotes

Edit: A more concise summary is found in this person's views: http://cal-harding.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-i-hate-eric-raym...

Also, see daveloyall's comments on this page. I don't fully agree with him either, but they are illuminating.

Thank you for taking the time out to reply. I won't press on this issue any longer; I believe that the links that you have provided are adequate starting points for understanding this issue a little better. Once again, thank you for the reply. PS: Some of the comments that ESR has made over the years are shocking; I was absolutely gutted to note as much after reading Harding's blog.

I don't think he wrote the entirety of the Jargon file, did he? Thought he only did the bits at the beginning and end of what became the New Hacker's Dictionary (portrait of j random hacker, etc.) but the original JF was something older he ended up maintaining.

Edit: never mind, just checked jargon-1 and the ethos entry either came from ESR or Guy Steele (both contributed to the rewrite afaik).

TL;DR: Yep, citing ESR does not help GP's case!

Thank you. I had wrote something about that in a comment I was working on minute ago, but it didn't make the final cut. I'll attempt to reproduce it:

ESR is so broken that he thinks being peerless is a good thing. The only time in my life when any of his writing made any sense to me was when I was myself so desperately alone that I didn't even realize what I was missing. I have considered reaching out to him, offering him a lifeline... But after reading his blog, I am sorry to predict that he would interpret any interaction with another human that results in his experience of an actual feeling to be an assault on his person, and that he is likely to respond in kind.

This seems out of place now that the comment thread has evolved. Anyway, it's clear that ESR is a polarizing issue. Citations pointing to the jargon file might be be less distracting if they are described as such, rather than as "ESR said..."

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