Theo's bad attitude is more the stuff of rumor rather than fact. More than a decade ago, when I first heard about Theo's abrasiveness, I went through nearly every mailing list post he'd ever made looking for the dirt (I was a teenager with time to kill). The end result? A dozen or so flames directed toward people who, in my eyes, seemed to have it coming.

It's a shame people don't talk as much about his tireless dedication to an important but relatively small open source project. He really is one of the true open source heroes.