Microsoft tries, and fails, to recruit open-source guru. In reply, Eric Raymond ridicules the offer: "I've in fact been something pretty close to your company's worst nightmare since about 1997." [Computerworld News]

How utterly juvenile. 

Eric S. Raymond still seems to live in a world where he believes himself to be much more important than actual reality would imply. Microsoft's worst nightmare? With all due respect to Mr. Raymond, himself and Mr. Stallman have probably been the two greatest impediments to the adoption of Linux, putting a quack, cult-of-personality face on what is otherwise a technological tour de force (it is remarkable how much more earthed and pragmatic Mr. Torvalds is about the OS in contrast). I have never met Eric personally, but I always got the impression that he was terribly overrated (I read the Cathedral and the Bazaar and found it trite and unpersuasive).

I could just imagine some random Microsoft recruiter doing blog searches and noting some ESR guy, and offering him a probing offer, only to get this sort of nonsense in reply. It's very Junior High-esque.

[UPDATE: I haven't been following Slashdot as much as I used to, but this was discussed there. One of the comments linked to a hilarious graphic as well]