That said, we also need to be able to separate the good and bad people do. Reiser in his capacity as a programmer is really a different entity to him in his capacity as a murderer. Celebrating one is not celebrating the other.
It is the stereotypical example, but it is such a good one that it deserves to become a cliche. Fritz Haber was sufficiently evil that apparently his wife committed suicide because of him. The Haber–Bosch process is probably one of the greatest technical contributions to humanity, ever, full stop. Maybe the steam engine can compete or a handful of other things. We can't allow technical excellence to be shunned because the technician had horrible problems - the shunning lessens us all. We can afford for bad people to be remembered if the price they pay is to create something of great use.