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09/14/2005: "ESR: worst nightmare of FOSS *and* village idiot"

Eric Raymond (aka 'ESR'), who claims to have invented "open source", received a query from a Microsoft head hunter. Eric responded, and then decided he hadn't said enough, when in fact, he'd already said too much.

John Leach asks, in reply (and comic-strip form), "Do tribes have the equivalent of a villiage idiot?"

Exhibit 'A':


In Jim Jarmusch's excellent "Dead Man", Gary Farmer plays an indian named "Nobody". Nobody's real name translates to, "he who talks loud and says nothing", but he prefers "Nobody". I submit that while ESR portends to disclaim his need for fame and glory, in secret, he considers himself more in the mode of Depp's character, "William Blake".

In the movie, Depp arrives in the town of Machine after a prolonged train ride to discover the job he was traveling to was filled my another applicant. The owner of Dickinson's Metal Works (think Gates and Microsoft) orders him out at the point of a gun. Depp hits a saloon, meets a woman selling paper roses, trysts, gets discovered by her ex-lover, shares a bullet with his tryst-mate, shoots the ex-lover, and flees into the wilderness (of open source), where he meets "Nobody", who stays with Depp for the rest of his short life.

Gunplay, women and syllogistic responses... just the type of thing that ESR eats for breakfast.