Yes, that was difficult indeed. But not, I think, for the reasons you mean:

FURTHER UPDATE: I had my serious, constructive converstation with Microsoft last year, when a midlevel exec named Steven Walli took me out to dinner at OSCON 2004 and asked, in so many words, “How can we not be evil?” And I told him — open up your file formats (including Word and multimedia), support open technical standards instead of sabotaging them, license your patents under royalty-free, paperwork-free terms.

I believe Steve Walli went back to his bosses and told them that truth. He is no longer with Microsoft, and what little he’ll say about it hints that they canned him for trying to change their culture.

Stephen Walli actually is back with Microsoft these days :-)

It was a rather different time. Personally I wouldn't have been as rude or have named names but it wasn't unreasonable to have a bit of fun at Microsoft's expense. This was Microsoft's "Linux is a cancer" period when they even had a senior exec whose charter was basically going after Linux (among other things).

For someone who wasn't around for all of that fun, thank you for helping add a little context to his words.

I should clarify that I totally understand his position against Microsoft, and agree with his points that you quoted.

As for whether or not that redeems him for acting like a badass to a run-of-the-mill recruiter, the jury is still out on that one.

Yes, I see your point. I sure felt his email was very unprofessional, but I don't think that at the time he was acting in a professional capacity. For a personal email I felt it was more acceptable and he didn't really have a go at the recruiter himself, not directly so.

Whatever happened afterwards, what happened before was that a random recruiter sent a random person on the Internet a form email.

It was a different time back then, hardware vendors had to sign exclusivity agreements, they were in general big bullies back in the day.

ESR paints himself as a big bully here too. If that is how he interacts with other people, then it helps me to understand why he dropped out of school and never really had a traditional job. (Note: I had to find that info on Wikipedia because I have never heard of this guy; ironic considering he touted starting the open-source movement and likened himself to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds).

I am very very thankful that our industry has evolved beyond this type of character.

"""I indicated to him that I thought somebody was probably having a little joke at his expense, and promised him an email reply. Here is my reply in its entirety:

...

UPDATE: For those of you who missed the subtlety (which was a surprising lot of you) I was quite polite to this guy on the phone. """

It seems to me that in the phone conversation, ESR made it pretty clear that he was not seriously considering it, and that he was going to reply in a strange manner.

I think he has a weird sense of humor, for sure, but I don't think he was particularly bullying that particular recruiter -- he was putting on a show of bullying Microsoft, because that was both his thing (as an early Open Source proponent) and fashionable at the time.

Yeah when I was typing my reply I forgot that he had a prior conversation over the phone. Still, the ego comes off a little too strong for my taste. I'm curious about how he feels today with Microsoft starting to embrace the open source community more.

He was kinda-sorta relevant in the 90s? I think? I like his Unix programming book.

Currently, his hobby appears to be posting wingnut craziness on his website.

Ditto.

The Art of Unix Programming is a great read.

Just make sure you don't read his blog.

The hardest part for me is that sometimes, just sometimes, his blog has some great little nuggets of insight and usefulness, but the signal to man-with-opinions-and-noone-said-no is just ... too low. :(

I think we haven't evolved past this. Torvalds seems to be exactly this kind of character.