ESR deserves no respect. He's a sexist racist homophobe. Just a small sample for your perusal: ESR denies HIV, praises Nazis, and claims the contemporary left in America is literally run by soviet propagandists: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=184 ESR says gay men are at fault for AIDS and are pedophiles: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=26 ESR says that women and black people shouldn't expect equal outcomes in STEM compared to men because they're just stupider on average: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=129
Ideas are more important than people. ESR deserves no respect, and until the hacker culture disabuses itself of ESR-style white supremacy and misogyny, we're never going to get to that gleaming chrome meritocracy we were all promised.ESR says Obama only won due to voter fraud: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=586
ESR's influence on techie culture is a betrayal to the hacker meritocracy. His abuse of his prominence is directly responsible for the promulgation of an attitude towards women and minorities which directly creates an atmosphere of exclusivity, which is why tech is so fucked up in 2015. A whole generation of hackers has grown up on his vile drivel and made them the willing tools of the hive of villainy that is Silicon Valley.