Tim Bray notes that Eric S. Raymond has evidently lost his mind. I’d argue that ESR’s mind has been going for quite some time now, and that he was better off talking about Cathedrals and Bazaars and such. After all, who but the most nutty nut would leave something as ripe and juicy as this lying around, unedited, hindsight being as it is today?

December 2003 update, version 2.0: Following the liberation of Iraq and the capture of Saddam Hussein, I have deleted a paragraph [from the Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto] about Iraq that victory has made obsolete.

And what was that paragraph?

THAT Saddam Hussein poses a particularly clear and present danger in combination with them, a danger demonstrated by his known efforts to develop nuclear weapons, his use of chemical weapons even on his own population, his demonstrated willingness to commit aggression against peaceful neighbors, and his known links to the Islamist terror network in Palestine and elsewhere.

If where we are at in Iraq is victory — what with all the insurgents, a constitutional process that’s regarded as a non-starter by at least a third of the population, angry factions on the brink of civil war, and general unrest with no end in sight — I’d sure as Hell hate to see defeat.