On September 12, 2001,
Guillaume Laurent wrote a brief piece called ESR Doesn’t Speak For Me. I’d like to pick up the banner and say that ESR doesn’t speak for me, either.


ESR’s latest rant,
An Open Letter To Darl McBride, is chock full of ad hominem attacks that do nothing to forward his arguments. It seems ESR is more concerned with being clever and showing off than actually acheiving any real results. Choice gems of pointless agression:

I’d ask if you’d found the right sort of isolated wasteland for your citadel of dread yet, but that would be a silly question; you’re in Utah, after all.


So far your so-called “evidence” is crap; you’d better climb down off your high horse before we shoot that sucker entirely out from under you.


[I]f you don’t stop trying to destroy Linux and everything else we’ve worked for I guarantee you won’t like what our alliance is cooking up next.

Then, to close the screed, ESR tells McBride


You have my email, you can have my phone if you want it, and you have my word of honor that you’ll get a fair hearing for any truths you have to offer.

as if the 15 previous paragraphs of hostility didn’t just happen. Does ESR actually think that he’s likely to get a response, or is that offer just a sop?


It makes me frustrated to see the leaders, self-appointed or otherwise, of Open Source turn to tactics of insults. I may agree with ESR’s position, but there’s no way he speaks for me.

Does ESR speak for you?