By Rachel Chalmers
Stung by months of criticism, Eric Raymond has offered to resign – but what is his job, exactly? That would be public advocate for the hacker tribe, speaker-to-journalists, evangelist/interface to the corporate world, Raymond explains, it’s an important job, because ideas don’t sell themselves. Better technology can’t win by itself without good propaganda.
Raymond says it’s a great job, and that the rewards so far have included travel, fame and one (1) groupie. But there is a downside: You have to be on the road half the time and fielding requests from journalists most of the other half. You start to miss your wife and your cat and your home pretty badly after two weeks in hotels, he writes, but there’s worse. You’ll find you have to fight to find any time to really think or reflect about the things that put you on that road in the first place. And you barely have the energy to actually hack code any more.
Worst of all, though, is the ingratitude of the community Raymond says he sought to serve. They’ll think you’re the hype instead of the ideas you’re hyping and savage you unmercifully, he says, ‘they’ll attack your methods. They’ll impugn your motives… And it will hurt.
Add that to burn-out and Raymond says he’ll hand over the job to the first qualified candidate. He then goes on to list eight qualifications, including a track record in free software development, code in every Linux distribution as well as the BSDs, excellent speaking and presentation skills, an outgoing personality, a knowledge base that includes anthropology and sociology along with the more mundane computer science and microeconomics, financial independence, longstanding relationships with community leaders, a thick skin, stamina and a robust sense of the absurd.
Raymond says that as soon as someone can demonstrate competence in each of these areas, I’ll hand you all my press contacts, make whatever introductions are needed, and disappear offstage so fast your head will spin. Raymond realizes, of course, that few besides himself can match his idiosyncratic list of skills. That’s the point. He wants the open source community to recognize the unusual nature of his contribution and to refrain from further criticism. Humble gratitude is not, however, what free software developers are chiefly famous for.
