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"A figure of little consequence in [his] own time..." I thought of Raymond himself. Who decided that this guy deserved to be one of the lucky few with canonical hacker initials?

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The main reason people know his initials is because he was one of the more influential people behind the "Open Source" concept and branding, as a distinct thing from the Free Software movement. He also wrote some fairly well-known books. His fame has declined since then, but his membership in the Three Initials Club has remained intact.

Here endeth the history lesson. Incidentally, you could have googled this if you were interested in hearing an answer rather than signaling indignation and/or contempt.

I'm well aware of the history. I was ironically posing the question in a probably slightly mean-spirited attempt to poke fun at him for not having written any notable software. I suppose he deserves credit for the philosophical contributions. The whole initials thing is ultimately pretty stupid. Maybe I was trying to get at why it's even become a convention. Why there is so much ego in the field in general.

He did.

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