So Microsoft tries to recruit Eric Raymond ...

[Sonny Gill]

So Microsoft tries to recruit Eric Raymond ...

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=208

(Work safe, unless you work for MS of course )

[Michael Ernest]

That's beautiful stuff.

[Arjunkumar Shastry]

Good to know that there are people whose interest in software goes beyond career,business and money.

[Sudharsan Govindarajan]

Hilarious!

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Hilarious? Only how full of himself ESR is. He got a generic recruiting form letter, one rung up from spam, really. It's a "v" account -- an external vendor, not even from Microsoft itself. The letter even asks him to pass the offer along to any friends he might have. Does he just press "delete"? No, he goes off on the poor guy, makes a whole Web page about it.

Have you ever seen the TV commercials where John O'Hurley goes on and on about how special they treat him because he's a celebrity? They put a whole miniature bar filled with specially-made tiny liquor bottles in his hotel room? They actually put a mint on his pillow? They actually call him to wake him up in the morning? That's ESR.

Now, if you want to see hilarious, read the comments on the Slashdot story about this incident.

[Michael Ernest]

Aw. c'mon, EFH, that's the entire fun of this thing. We all know any monster corporation runs on a fair amount of mindlessness. The joke here is how seriously Raymond takes it -- and by extension, just how much time is too much time to have on one's hands.

Have you heard these other Open Source, Cathedral/Bazaar, Linux people go off? It is a scream. My personal favorite was some bit from Stallman that started something like, "if your software is Open Source, it's basically ethical." How's that for commercial terrorism? You're morally wrong if you want to sell your intellectual property.

I laughed my ass off through The Cathedral and the Bazaar. I found it hard to imagine a movement that both decried the commercialization of software development and brags how it can get so many people to do the same work for nothing.

It would be fun I'm sure to knock the man down for his unchecked ego. But hey: Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Scott McNealy, that freak at SCO, Stallman...it's not exactly an industry of quiet, passive leaders to begin with.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Hmm. OK. So long as you're laughing at him, not with him. But the guy is an embarrassment.

[Michael Ernest]

Here's an example of a guy I like to laugh with. The courage of his convictions and he lives them.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Yeah, jwz rocks. The thing I like about him is that he has no qualms about publicly changing his mind about stuff. He always has good reasons, and explains them well.

[Grishma Dube]

who is Eric S. Raymond??

[Sonny Gill]

This might help -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Raymond

But as you can gather from EFH and ME's comments, he is more than a bit controversial.

[David Ulicny]

I found his homepage
http://www.catb.org/~esr/

The community has a tradition of tri-letterizing its heroes.

[Anjali S Sharma]

I feel ESR has made a big deal out of nothing. The letter which he received was not an offer letter but some HR person was only trying to schedule an appointment with him. Had Microsoft really made an offer for a job to ESR, might have made the whole thing hilarious but at the moment it just falls short of being so.

[Michael Ernest]

Spokespeople for movements who believe themselves in the middle of things aren't generally know for downplaying the importance of whatever happens to them.

Here'a good list. See who you recognize and think why you remember about them.