“Raymond is intelligent and literate, and makes his arguments
about the benefits of open source in ways that are calculated to
convince corporations that there’s more money to be made with open
code than closed in many situations. He’s one of the relatively few
people who can write first-hand accounts of long-running,
successful open source projects, and can write authoritatively
about the hacker community in the early days of the internet.”
“The essays make good reading, if you’re into computers and
software at all. Sometimes there are people who are good at
something who nevertheless can’t write about it. Bill Gates is
probably a good example – he’s good at what he does, but he sure as
hell can’t convey his knowledge. I’ve read Andy Grove’s book about
his management experiences, and I wasn’t impressed by it either –
again, it seemed like there was someone who knew how to do
something but couldn’t explain it (and haven’t we all had teachers
like that?).”
“Raymond is not only a gifted hacker, but an excellent
writer as well. He manages to convey information about the culture
one has to manage, which turns out to be very good way to teach
someone how to manage it; or at least it was for me,
anyway.“