My apologies if some find this as spam, but I suspect this group might also find this a worth while read.
Full discloser, I have known John since 1983 or 1984 (I do not remember when we were co-worked at the firm he talks about in the article [Masscomp]. I have also read of number of his books and liked them. In my role as President of USENIX, I allowed John to hawk his books at some of our conferences, but other than buying his books, I have never given him $s.
Clem
Note: I predated John at Masscomp (and I think he left for Sun before I left for Stellar).
Many of you know that MSCP
was an early 1980s a start up with a lot of ex-VMS/VAX guys (that predated Sun and actually did $20M in business the year Sun did it's first $1M).. Tim, Janet and I shared a card table as our first desk. I think John and Steve did get hired until we expanded to the 2 bldg in Littleton and kicked SW out. Everything in the piece WRT to Masscomp I will valid as true, and like John; when I have run into Tim in the past few years I'm not sure he recognized me either [although unlike John, I do still exchange christmas cards with Steve Talbot and just two weeks ago got an email from Tim about something else].
I completely agree with John's point about about Eric Raymond too BTW. And John makes a side bar, that "open source" being co-opted from the 60s. He's stumbled on that right. I have always said the "father" of Open Source was the late Prof Donald O. Peterson (aka dop) from what he did in the late 1960s. But that's a story for another time.