Eric S. Raymond

As a Facebook user, do I have control of the data Facebook keeps about me? Concretely: can I examine and modify that…

— Eric S. Raymond

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow (e.g., given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized…

— Eric S. Raymond

Being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker anymore than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer.

— Eric S. Raymond

“Anyway, in a world of cheap PCs and fast Internet links, we find pretty consistently that the only really limiting resource is…

— Eric S. Raymond

Equally, the Internet interprets attempts at proprietary control as threats and mobilizes to defeat them.

— Eric S. Raymond

Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)

— Eric S. Raymond

When writing gateway software of any kind, take pains to disturb the data stream as little as possible - and never throw…

— Eric S. Raymond

“Brook’s Law: “Adding more programmers to a late project makes it later.”

— Eric S. Raymond

In early 1993, a hostile observer might have had grounds for thinking that the Unix story was almost played out, and with…

— Eric S. Raymond

When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be your friend.

— Eric S. Raymond

And for any agents or proxy of the regime interested in asking me questions face to face, I've got some bullets slathered…

— Eric S. Raymond

“The case can be put less negatively: where network effects (positive network externalities) dominate, open source is likely to be the right…

— Eric S. Raymond

In the beginning, there were Real Programmers.

— Eric S. Raymond

“Yes, the success of open source does call into some question the utility of command-and-control systems, of secrecy, of centralization, and of…

— Eric S. Raymond

Berkeley hackers liked to see themselves as rebels against soulless corporate empires.

— Eric S. Raymond

The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.

— Eric S. Raymond

The ARPAnet was the first transcontinental, high-speed computer network.

— Eric S. Raymond

We hackers are a playful bunch; we'll hack anything, including language, if it looks like fun (thus our tropism for puns). Deep…

— Eric S. Raymond

Does Facebook behave like a tool in my hand, or a firehose designed to spew at me in accordance with other peoples'…

— Eric S. Raymond

If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.

— Eric S. Raymond

That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color.

— Eric S. Raymond

Does Facebook act as though I own my online life, or as though it does? Concretely: Can I control what data it…

— Eric S. Raymond

Grovelling is not a substitute for doing your homework.

— Eric S. Raymond

A critical factor in its success was that the X developers were willing to give the sources away for free in accordance…

— Eric S. Raymond

The only way to write complex software that won't fall on its face is to hold its global complexity down - to…

— Eric S. Raymond