Resume of Eric Steven Raymond

If you are looking at a paper snapshot, the latest version is available at <URL://www.catb.org/~esr/resume.html>. It is a single HTML document and readily downloadable.

Work Experience

Open Source Initiative (June 1998 to present)

I co-founded and served as president until 2005 of the Open Source Initiative, a 501(c)3 educational organization that builds bridges between the hacker community and business with the aim of spreading the open-source development method.

VA Linux Systems (November 1998 to April 2002)

I was a member of the Board of Directors of VA Linux Systems (NASDAQ symbol LNUX), a leading Linux hardware and systems company during the dot-com era. As one of five directors I helped steer VA through its record-breaking IPO in December 1999.

Technical Director, Chester County InterLink (October 1993 to June 1999)

In September 1993, I co-founded Chester County InterLink (CCIL) as its Technical Director. CCIL is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization chartered to provide free InterNet access to the residents of Chester County, Pennsylvania. At last count, it had over two thousand users and was gaining about fifty a week.

My responsibilities during this period have included:

• The technical design of the entire project. I specified and set up the hardware, acquired and configured the OS, designed and implemented most of our custom software, and held primary responsibility for administration until mid-October 1994. I remain the project's only full-time member.
• Budgeting and planning for the project's technical side. I wrote the expansion plan that secured us our first $16,000 in donations.
• Recruitment and management of a team of between four and six programmers, who have enhanced the system software and provided needed administrative services.
• Design and implementation of InterLink, a multi-user UNIX BBS that we use as our front end for ordinary user accounts. InterLink pushed beyond 1994's state-of-the-art in BBS systems and has attracted national attention in the Internet Service Provider community. To check it out, see locke.ccil.org.
• System and network administration, including DNS and Ethernet management on a multi-host network with 56K to the Internet.
• Co-responsibility for decisions on numerous policy issues, including common-carrier vs. publisher status, liability protection, content control, etc.
• Numerous fund-raising presentations to corporate audiences.

Independent Consulting (May 1985 to October 1993)

• Production and release of The New Hacker's Dictionary (see below).
• Maintainence and extension of the GNU Emacs editor.
• Contract software design and development for various local businesses including a medical practice, a newspaper, a truck-dispatch service, and a computer peripherals manufacturer.
• A rewrite of the USENET netnews software.

Rabbit Software (May 1983 to June 1985)

MicroCorp (November 1981 to April 1983)

Burroughs Federal and Special Systems Group (November 1980 to November 1981)

Wharton School Computer Center (August 1977 to October 1979)

Technical Skills

Hardware:

My home computer is a PCI-bus Pentium 133 running Red Hat Linux.

Operating Systems:

Languages:

Communications Skills

Product Credits

• "UNBASIC" for TRS-80 models I, II and III.
• "Intelliterm" for IBM PC, TRS-80 Models I, III (coauthor)
• "6700 Standard-LISP" for Burroughs 6700/6800 mainframes (coauthor)
• "RVIEW Line Editor" for Burroughs B20 and B25 workstations
• "Windows-Plus" for VAX-11/750 under 4.1BSD and the PC/AT under XENIX.
• "Rabbit 3270-Plus" for many UNIX systems (contributor)
• "UniPress EMACS V2" for many UNIX systems (credited contributor)
• "GNU Emacs 18.5[2-8], 19, and 20" for many UNIX systems (credited contributor)
• "NetHack 3.0" for many UNIX systems, via USENET (credited contributor)
• "keybind", a utility for remapping SVr3 and XENIX keyboards. (USENET)
• "nrtools", tools for using dot-matrix printers with nroff. (USENET)
• "spkr", a speaker-control device driver for UNIX machines (now used in FreeBSD). (USENET)
• "C-INTERCAL", an INTERCAL-to-C compiler. (USENET)
• gud.el, interactive symbolic debugger control from EMACS (Emacs 19).
• vc.el, a version control front-end for RCS or SCCS under EMACS (Emacs 19).
• I wrote the IEEE reference implementation of PILOT.
• ncurses, a screen-handling library with an API compatible with System V curses(3). (principal co-developer).
• The InterLink multi-user UNIX BBS.
• I maintain fetchmail, a freeware utility for retrieving and forwarding mail from POP2/POP3/IMAP mailservers.
• keeper, the archivist's robot assistant used to maintain the Metalab site.
• CML2, a replacement configuration system for the Linux kernel incorporating theorem-proving. This has been accepted for the 2.5 kernel.
• I am listed in the Linux credits file.

For more recent projects, see my software page

My technical tutorial The Hitchhiker's Guide to X386 Video Timing (or, Tweaking Your Monitor Modes for Fun and Profit) is included as an official part of the XFree86 distribution of X11R6 and the high-performance SGCS X server.

I have been an active member of the GNU project, and was principally responsible for EMACS Lisp maintenance between December 1991 and June 1993. Many of the new features in Emacs 19 were my work.

I maintain numerous other well-regarded FAQ and HOWTO documents, including the Software Release Practice HOWTO, the So You Want To Be A UNIX Wizard? FAQ (aka The Loginataka), the Unix and Internet Fundamental HOWTO, the Unix Hardware Buyer's HOWTO, the XFree86 Video Timings HOWTO, and the How To Become A Hacker FAQ.

Publication Credits

• Going Forth, PC Magazine Volume 1 Number 3.
• Understanding UNIX, PC Magazine Volume 3 Number 10.
• Assemblers Without Ulcers, PC Tech Journal Volume 2 Number 3.
• Standards Everywhere, Byte, January 1992.
• Building The Perfect Box, Linux Journal #36, April 1997.
• Numerous reviews and short pieces for UNIX TODAY and Linux Journal.

Understanding UNIX was the lead article of a special section, and only missed being the cover story because IBM released the ill-fated PC Junior that week. Assemblers Without Ulcers was for years standard course material at the Boston Computer Society's technical seminars.

I have the following book credits:

I was the principal researcher and author of Portable C and UNIX Systems Programming, ISBN 0-13-686494-5 from the Prentice-Hall Software series, 249pp. (the name "J. E. Lapin" appearing on the cover was a corporate fiction).

The Waite Group's 1987 book The UNIX Papers (ISBN 06722-25786, 517pp) features a paper by me entitled The Future of UNIX and Open Systems Standards. I was also the major technical reviewer for the book.

I conceived and edited The New Hacker's Dictionary (MIT Press, 1991, ISBN 0-262-18145-2). This book received enthusiastic reviews in The New York Times, PC Magazine, Byte, PC World, UNIX Review, IEEE Spectrum, and numerous other popular and technical magazines. In August 1993 the second edition was cited in Newsweek.

The second edition of The New Hacker's Dictionary came out September 1993 and, so far, has been equally successful. The book seems well on its way towards becoming an institution, and will probably outlive my tenure as editor. Sales to date are about 40,000 copies.

The advent of the September 1996 third edition led to interviews in Wired (August 1996) and People (October 1996).

In November 1996 O'Reilly Associates published the second edition of Learning GNU Emacs, ISBN 0-937175-84-6. I am a credited coauthor of this edition.

In early 1998, I was the editor of Linux Undercover, the compendium of Linux documentation published by Red Hat Software.

In 1999, O'Reilly associates published my three essays on open-source development as The Cathedral and the Bazaar. A second edition was released in January 2001. This book reached #7 on the New York Times's list of business-book bestsellers.

I have the following miscellaneous other credits:

Language I originated has been incorporated in the POSIX Draft proposed UNIX standard (re tape archive backup formats and extensions to multi-volume operation) and in the ANSI X3J11 Draft Proposed C Standard (re the asm() optional extension).

I have twice been a guest lecturer at the Institute For Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. I ran workshops there on Emacs and Internet for the technical staff and research scientists.

I was selected to be a member of the program committee for the first Conference on Freely Redistributable Software, held in Boston February 1996.

I was an invited speaker at Linux Kongress '97, the Atlanta Linux Showcase, and the first Perl Conference in 1997. My paper, The Cathedral And The Bazaar, was very well received. This paper was subsequently described by Netscape Communications, Inc., as a major factor in their decision to release their client software as open source. Since this event I have been an invited speaker on various aspects of open source at dozens of technical conferences.

I was one of the invitees at Tim O'Reilly's history-making Freeware Summit in April 1998. Other invitees included Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall, Phil Zimmerman, Guido Van Rossum, and John Gilmore.

I was also the keynote speaker at Open Source Developer Day in August 1998 and at the 7th Python Conference in November 1998.

I am a member of Merrill Lynch's Technology Advisory Board.

I earned a design assistance credit in the 6.1 edition of Close Action (Tempest Games), a highly-regarded set of rules for simulation of Napoleonic-era naval warfare.

I have appeared as a supporting artist on two record albums: A Song of Gods Gone Mad (Daystar Records, 1980), and Full Circle (Third Day Records, 1995).

Education

Undergraduate studies (including some graduate-level courses) in mathematics and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.

I have never taken any courses in computer science or software engineering.

Personal Data

My interests (outside of computers) include science fiction, wargaming, writing, martial arts (I hold a World Tae-Kwon-Do Federation 1st Dan Black Belt, have fought in battleline with SCA heavy weapons, and am studying aikido), firearms (especially target and tactical pistol shooting), epic poetry and music (I play and compose on flute, guitar, hand drums and voice, and occasionally perform with local bands in the Chester County area). I have a novel (SF, titled Shadows and Stars) nearly completed.