Quotes by Eric S. Raymond

About Eric S. Raymond:

Eric Steven Raymond is an American software developer, author of the widely cited 1997 essay, and 1999 book The Cathedral and the Bazaar and other works, and open source software advocate. He wrote a guidebook for the Roguelike game NetHack. In the 1990s, he edited and updated the Jargon File, currently in print as the The New Hacker's Dictionary.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Money is just a way to keep score. The best people in any field are motivated by passion. That becomes more true the higher the skill level gets.

Eric S. Raymond

Does Facebook act as though I own my online life, or as though it does? Concretely: Can I control what data it shares with other users, with advertisers, and with business partners?

Eric S. Raymond

For the first time, individual hackers could afford to have home machines comparable in power and storage capacity to the minicomputers of ten years earlier - Unix engines capable of supporting a full development environment and talking to the Intern...

Eric S. Raymond

Thompson and Ritchie were among the first to realize that hardware and compiler technology had become good enough that an entire operating system could be written in C, and by 1978 the whole environment had been successfully ported to several machine...

Eric S. Raymond

In the beginning, there were Real Programmers.

Eric S. Raymond

The beginnings of the hacker culture as we know it today can be conveniently dated to 1961, the year MIT acquired the first PDP-1.

Eric S. Raymond

The ARPAnet was the first transcontinental, high-speed computer network.

Eric S. Raymond

If Unix could present the same face, the same capabilities, on machines of many different types, it could serve as a common software environment for all of them.

Eric S. Raymond

The workstation-class machines built by Sun and others opened up new worlds for hackers.

Eric S. Raymond

Berkeley hackers liked to see themselves as rebels against soulless corporate empires.

Eric S. Raymond

In early 1993, a hostile observer might have had grounds for thinking that the Unix story was almost played out, and with it the fortunes of the hacker tribe.

Eric S. Raymond

Linux evolved in a completely different way. From nearly the beginning, it was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the Internet.

Eric S. Raymond

As a Facebook user, do I have control of the data Facebook keeps about me? Concretely: can I examine and modify that data using tools of my choosing which are built for my needs?

Eric S. Raymond

Does Facebook behave like a tool in my hand, or a firehose designed to spew at me in accordance with other peoples' agendas? Concretely: can I write my own client to present a filtered view of the Facebook stream, or have other people do that for me?

Eric S. Raymond

People who study primate societies make a distinction between two kinds of cultural interactions, agonic and hedonic. In agonic societies, you gain status by asserting dominance over others. In hedonic societies, you gain status by drawing attention ...

Eric S. Raymond

It's not all that important that you be able to originate brilliant ideas... The more important talent is to be able to recognize good ideas from other people.

Eric S. Raymond

A critical factor in its success was that the X developers were willing to give the sources away for free in accordance with the hacker ethic, and able to distribute them over the Internet.

Eric S. Raymond

When are programmers happy? They're happy when they're not underutilized - when they're not bored - and also when they're not overburdened with inappropriate specifications or meaningless bureaucracies. In other words, programmers are happiest when t...

Eric S. Raymond

People are happiest when they're the most productive. People enjoy tasks, especially creative tasks, when the tasks are in the optimal-challenge zone: not too hard and not too easy. To some extent, that has always been true. But it becomes even more ...

Eric S. Raymond

Author Bio

  • NameEric S. Raymond
  • DescriptionAmerican computer programmer, author, and advocate for the open source movement
  • AliasesEric Raymond; Eric Steven Raymond; ESR
  • BornDecember 4, 1957
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionSoftware Developer; Engineer; Programmer; Writer