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Comment by canadaduane | Hacker News Reader

"Don't look him up, he's not exactly role model material." I don't admire the ethos of putting people in bad boxes.

On the otherhand, I greatly appreciate that we don't pretend everyone is 100% awesome all the time. We shouldn't hold people up as role models that we don't want to emulate, and whatnot.

If we're not pretending everyone is awesome then why permanently deselect certain people as role models?

One of them is legit a saint and the other almost as much. They absolutely are role models, and the way they are talked about now is exactly a lesson in the problem. If more people emulated them, the world would be a much better place.

I can't help but disagree with you 100%. Brilliant technicians aren't automatically role models, and both men have plenty of characteristics that shouldn't be emulated.

Their positive influence on open source is real; that doesn't make them, as people, role models.

Technical abilities are nothing more than big muscles. No one with any depth at all would mean anything like that when they say things like "role model" and "saint", and no one with a lick of sense would assume anyone else would.

Forgive me, i figured it obvious that anyone using the words "Saint" and "Eric S Raymond" in a flattering light would have neither depth nor sense

If you're talking about Eric S. Raymond here, I'm having trouble not believing that this is just bait. Even in the Linux community, purely on Linux terms he's a problematic and polarizing figure.

I'm annoyed at the arc these discussions invariably take into Raymond's backstory or whatever, because I think CATB fails objectively, on its own merits (or lack thereof) and we don't need to wade into this other stuff. But if we're having the discussion: seems like kind of a wild statement to say he's any reasonable person's role model.

You have held a very public grudge against him for at least two decades. Don’t pretend now that you can be objective about anything concerning him.

What "grudge" would I hold against him? If you mean I've long believed (like a huge portion of people who actively work on Linux, unlike me) that his output is enormously overrated, guilty as charged, I guess? It sounds like you're just accusing me of not having changed my mind about him.

I think enough of us have imperfections that we can appreciate that people who've done wonderful things have also done some very $#!tty things. Someone doesn't need to be a saint to still have a wide, positive influence.

Which wonderful things are you referring to?

I went looking to refresh my memory, and Wikipedia reminded me about the brief window where ESR lent his voice to the Great Slate and helped raise money for progressive campaigns.

It also instigates people to look at the worst in others. Don't think about pink elephants!

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