Why I hate Eric Raymond

Eric Steven Raymond (who likes it when people call him "esr" for pretty much the same reason I'd like it if people called me Optimus Cal) is a self-professed hacker.  I use the term "self-professed" with more than a dash of snark here, because anyone who consciously and unironically refers to themselves as a hacker in today's world is on par with those who publicly label themselves geniuses - presumably because nobody else can do so with a straight face.  In short, something of a sexually unappealing Kanye West.

Eric has been active in hacking circles since the seventies, and has been actively promoting the open source movement since it started, well, moving.  He is also the current maintainer of the legendary Jargon File.  I have a lot of respect for Eric for these - and other - positive contributions.  Unfortunately, this respect is outweighed by the simple fact that Eric is a giant douchebag.

This dislike is born from a number of reasons, mainly Eric's...

1. Overinflated sense of self-importance.

Eric describes himself as one of the most significant figures in the history of free software.  In his own words, "Today I'm one of the half-dozen or so most influential people in that movement; in fact, a lot of people would put me among the top three, with Linus Torvalds and Richard M. Stallman."

That's a very bold statement, and you would expect the person who makes it to be (in addition to an asshole) a talented coder who has authored software that can be listed alongside a kernel estimated to be worth $1.14 billion USD, or one of the most popular compilers on Earth.  However, probably Eric's primary contribution in the form of actual code is originally authoring the fetchmail utility: a mail client whose poor design and security holes have been criticized by, among others, one of my personal heroes, Daniel J. Bernstein.

More hubris: "I either founded or re-invented [...] the open source movement.  If that term means nothing to you, think Linux... "  I just love the subtle implication that Eric's actually had a direct and significant role in Linux development.  That's logic from the Steve Smith school of reasoning: "I've met Linus, Linus created Linux.  By the transitive property, I created Linux.  Algebra's awesome!"

In reality, though, Eric's main attempt at a contribution to the Linux kernel was in the form of CML2, a code configuration system, which was rejected by the kernel development team and the original CML was eventually replaced with LinuxKernelConf.  The possibility that it simply wasn't good enough being incomprehensible to him, Eric blamed the rejection on "politics."

2. Political views.

Eric calls himself an anarcho-capitalist (one of those terms freshman political science students call themselves until the second semester when they actually learn what the fuck they're talking about) and a libertarian.  This is especially rich considering his support for the war on Iraq.  He also called for an "imperialist" campaign to "civilize" the Muslim world.  A rather significant personal stance that is conspicuously absent from the later revisions to his Wikipedia article.

He is also a bit of a gun nut, which I have little problem with, but it does become more than a little creepy when you consider that he privately threatened Bruce Perens to the point where Perens feared for his safety.  Again, suspiciously absent from Wikipedia.

3. Social views.

Eric believes that IQ distribution among women does a better job than cultural sexism of explaining why the high achievers in most fields are male ("get back in the kitchen!"), and - possibly more explosively - that African Americans are responsible for a disproportionate percentage of crimes because they have lower IQs:

"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."

His views on homosexuality are equally repulsive, equating homosexuality with pederasty and pedophilia.

I can see why Eric decided to develop fetchmail in the first place: he probably didn't want any mail he sent or received to be touched by a piece of software written by a gay man, so he attempted to author a sendmail replacement, couldn't wrap his head around UUCP, and just gave up and wrote a mail retrieval agent instead.

4. Fucking up the Jargon File.

Many hackers feel that after taking over maintenance of the Jargon File, Eric began to change it to reflect his own warped political views and personal agendas.  He has shifted the tome's focus away from early, pre-Unix hacker culture, added words to the glossary that nobody except he has ever used, and - among other controversial edits - changed the description of hacker politics from being "vaguely liberal-moderate" to the more Eric-centric "moderate-to-neoconservative."  The Holy Bible of hackish culture has been reduced to being Eric's personal vanity document.

In conclusion, I can't say it any better than one of Eric's many fans once did on Wikipedia.  Eric, you are an asshole.

Brown Ubuntu: It's not that bad, really!

Ubuntu has taken quite a bit of flack from the get go for its, uhm... unique... default colour scheme; mostly because the overarching colour of the theme is brown. Now, I myself am quite partial to it. It's warm, welcoming, and a departure from the same old blue- and silver-based themes with which most other operating systems seem to roll off the assembly line. This default theme has been tweaked throughout Ubuntu's various releases, but the main colour palette still remains based around the colour brown.

My current (at time of writing) Ubuntu Linux desktop.

I've thus far been rather indifferent to this particularly nasty brand of prejudice... Until it made its way onto my own doorstep. Judging me by the colour of my skin is one thing, but judging me by the colour of my desktop? Well, I'm afraid that's just going too far.

A sagacious relative of mine bombasted his corpulent cuerpo into my bedroom on a recent visit, and spied my Ubuntu desktop (sporting a modified, but still very much brown, theme). The first words echoing from out of his abysmal estuary described my desktop as "looking like shit." Not in a metaphorical sense, mind you, but in a very literal, faecal one. I shrugged it off and distracted him by tossing an animal cracker down the hall. Nevertheless, this got me thinking. Why would the first thing someone thinks of, when seeing the colour brown, be shit? There's nothing inherently shitty about the colour brown - though, I concede, there's something inherently brown about shit.

When I think of the colour brown, the first thing that pops into my head is chocolate. Something which is a treat: A delicious luxury to be sampled only by the most deserving. Wouldn't this be a very clever - or at least marketable - way to describe a great operating system? Think of a high quality, free operating system as being analogous to a neverending river of chocolate. The former being as much a pleasure to use as the latter is to eat. Except that Ubuntu won't cause you to get fat (in theory). Nor cause you to become diabetic and lead you to a lifetime of health problems and an early death. Okay, come to think of it, maybe chocolate isn't such a marketable analogy, but hey, at least it's not shit.

Another thing that comes to mind when I think of the colour brown is coffee. A delicious beverage with a history as rich as its flavour, and with as many varieties as it has fans; one for every palate. A universally beloved infusion which is welcoming enough to be accessible to the casual drinker, yet still full and complex enough to please the connoisseur. A drink equally at home and appropriate in a professional atmosphere as in a casual one, a pot of which not being out of place in either a cosy room with a few close friends, or the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company.

Wouldn't that last paragraph, awkward though it may be, describe Linux with equal comeliness? Of course it would, because it does.

What it comes down to is that those who attack Ubuntu for adopting a brown default theme for their Linux distribution are really just highlighting their own short-sightedness. Clearly, they feel the need to beset those who dare deviate from the norm of cold, sparse themes which are about as homely as an operating theater.

Your choice of themes, much like your choice of sexual partner, is an individual thing and entirely your own business, but it seems irrational to attack Ubuntu for using a brown default theme, given its warmth, neutrality and individuality.

Mark Shuttleworth has written a great defense of the choice of brown for the default Ubuntu theme, clearly explaining the motivation.

As requested, here's a link to the GTK Dust theme.