Textbook of Linux

b. 1957, Boston — Programmer, author, free/open-source advocate

Also known as: Raymond, Eric S. Raymond, ESR

Eric Steven Raymond is best known for The Cathedral and the Bazaar (1997), an essay contrasting "cathedral" software development (small teams, releases polished behind closed doors) with the "bazaar" model Linux popularised (many contributors, release early, release often, public mailing lists). The essay persuaded Netscape to open-source its browser — the decision that created Mozilla and, eventually, Firefox.

Raymond coined — or at least popularised — the term open source in 1998, aiming to rebrand free software for a business audience less comfortable with Stallman's politics. He co-founded the Open Source Initiative the same year. He also maintained fetchmail for a period and wrote The New Hacker's Dictionary (the Jargon File), a sprawling and often funny documentation of programmer folklore.

His later politics — libertarian, sometimes hard-right, with public positions on firearms and gender that many in the free-software community find objectionable — have made him a controversial figure, though the Cathedral/Bazaar essay itself remains widely read as a foundational document of open-source development.