Essay RFC delayed.

[Eric S. Raymond]

Bojay Iversen <signal11 at mediaone.net>:
> And the papers he has published are an attempt to define what makes the whole
> thing tick so that an average person (suit?) can understand it. 

Actually they didn't start out with even *that* much ambition.  When I was
writing CatB I had in mind an internal audience only -- I was just as
astonished as everybody else at the Netscape thing.  More, maybe.

Somebody else could have written CatB.  Somebody else could have done
my selling job to the suits.  And, in fact, I think similar
developments were pretty much inevitable within a few years after the
Great Internet Explosion of 1993-1994.  Or, at least, that's what I
tell myself to try to keep my head from swelling ;-).

Historians have been arguing for three centuries over whether the
times make the man or the man makes the times.  Having been there for
at least one critical pivot point, I can report that the answer is
"yes" :-).  I've felt all along like the author of CatB was in some
sense an invention of the hacker tribe -- that taking "credit" for
it would be nearly as silly as a fish taking credit for discovering
the existence of water.  On the other hand, *I* made "open source"
happen.  These things are never simple.
--
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character,
give him power.
	-- Abraham Lincoln