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Comment by qwertyuiop924 | Hacker News Reader

Yep. He said Mozilla didn't deserve to exist because they removed Eich as head after that debacle. And yeah, he's an awful person.

But he does, to some extent, deserve the title "Hacker," because he genuinely is a talented programmer. We don't have to stoop to his level, and discrininate based on ideology: even if we hate him, we can admit he's got talent.

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His software work is unremarkable (fetchmail is trivial and buggy, and CML2 was rejected by the Linux kernel developers), and he's made his career not by writing software but by attacking real hackers like Richard Stallman and trying to bring down their work, not by actually constructively developing any useful software himself. Attacking real hackers and trying to discourage people from using "free software" isn't "hacking".

When I knew him during the 80's, he would go on and on ad nauseum about his beloved "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle NetNews Reader" and how so much better than every other netnews reader. But he never collaborated with anyone, and he never released it under any license. Much more Bizarre than Cathedral.

> When I knew him during the 80's, he would go on and on ad nauseum about his beloved "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle NetNews Reader" and how so much better than every other netnews reader. But he never collaborated with anyone, and he never released it under any license. Much more Bizarre than Cathedral.

The world is full of such things, and was much more so back in the 90s and early 2000s. People brag about how great their tool is, but refuse to share it. I've never been sure if they're exaggerating the features, or if they're insecure about criticism on their magnum opus, or if they just have such a weird and idiosyncratic evolved setup that they cannot effectively package the software for others to use.

Edit: I mean, it's not like ESR had qualms about releasing fetchmail, which has always been a buggy pain in the ass and far less impressive than he makes it sound.

I think you missed the dripping irony that the person whose sole topic of conversation during the 1980's was the newsreader software he was developing, but he never shared it or collaborated with anyone or ever even published it under any license, also wrote "The Cathedral and the Bazar".

Fair enough, but how about GPSD?

The fact that GPSD is the best thing you can come up with that he wrote pretty much proves my point, doesn't it?

If that's all it takes to brand yourself a "hacker", in spite of executing a vicious multi-decade jihad against Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, then being a "hacker" doesn't mean anything.

I'd like to think that vitriolically disagreeing with the part of the Hacker Manifesto that says "We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religous bias," and other violent acts like sending a death threat to Bruce Perins then trying to excuse it by explaining he was only trying to "defame" him, would disqualify him from branding himself as a hacker. But I'm an idealist.

You know, I think you're right. But the thing is "without religious bias." We can say ESR isn't a hacker because his code's not good enough, and having stated your case, I'd agree, but saying he's not a hacker because he doesn't agree with us ideologically is undermining our own ideology.

Except that he's made a career of trying to pose as a hacker, define what a hacker is, tell people how to become a hacker, viciously attack the person, the philosophy and the life's work of one of the world's leading and most respected, influential and successful (if not quirky) hackers, and even hijack and distort the definition of the very words in the hacker's dictionary to reflect his own extremist political ideology, which most certainly does not align with the non-bigoted ideology in the Hacker's Manifesto that we're discussing.

Well, first off, the hacker as defined by the hacker's manifesto is very different from the definition ESR tried to warp. Also, yeah, ESR is a jerk. I don't argue that. He's an awful person. However, both definitions of hacker involve only judgement by output, not judgement of race or ideology.

And if we called people out for being horrible, RMS would be right out. I respect the man's work work and ideology, but I respect it slightly less when he starts licking his own toes while publically calling John Ousterhout a cancer.

> Yep. He said Mozilla didn't deserve to exist because they removed Eich as head after that debacle. And yeah, he's an awful person.

I don't get how a person can get labeled "awful" or "scum" because he doesn't agree with you.

Personally I'm fine with Mozilla existing, but I do consider the Eich debacle to be one of the bigger examples of SJWism going way too far.

It's not simply because he doesn't agree with you, it's because of his long and vile track record of racism, bigotry, misogyny, and attacking people by twisting facts and outright lying, and of course trying to make a career out of destroying Richard Stallman and his work.

I've known him for decades, since the 80's, and while it's true he totally went off the deep end after 9/11, he has always been a vile awful person.

And remember: Eich wasn't "removed", he CHOSE to resign of his own free will -- Mozilla even begged him to stay and offered him a well paid important position! But ESR's revisionist history never mentions that.

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