I see you have very strong feeling on ESR, and he's certainly turned from being libertarian to a fascist. I'm curious to see how you feel about RMS.
I know a little more about RMS than I do about ESR.
I love that damn dirty hippie to bits. He can be an ass too, but he's an ass with firm, justified principles he stands by. I followed his bloggings for a while (years back), and he also likes to poke his nose outside the techonosphere too - and that's also when he becomes an ass, usually.
RMS has become a vending machine for startups to put in money and out comes "You're a hacker and you're a hacker and you're a hacker and EVERYONE'S A HACKER", and then newly minted grads feel better about making their career a part of their identity and working long hours. Or maybe I'm a cynic. Yes, I'm a cynic. I aspired to meet RMS and and earn my Hacker Merit Badge (TM) for my open source contributions all throughout childhood and most of college. When that did finally happen, I lost all respect for him because I didn't feel worthy of being called a hacker; I felt it had been purchased by my school, and that if I had met him in a different context he would think differently of me. Was that just imposter syndrome worming its way through my brain? Probably. It's through writing this post that I realize how deep imposter syndrome can go, to the point when a childhood hero's mark of approval gets twisted into "well this can't have really been meaningful at all". I blame the privileged techie scum. #DieTechieScum :) Actually, I changed my mind. RMS is fine, because at least he responded to criticisms of sexism in his whole EMACS virgin spiel. ESR would never have done that.