I know you're addressing "the culture" here in general, but seeing as I'm part of it, I really want to make clear it's not merely monetization that impresses me

I know you're addressing "the culture" here in general, but seeing as I'm part of it, I really want to make clear it's not merely monetization that impresses me about Steve Jobs. He spent over a decade heavily involved in developing the NextStep platform, which has been heavily influential on all of the computing environments we use today. There would be no Windows 95, no KDE or Gnome as we know them without him. His accomplishments before 1997 were already enough to put him in a hacker hall of fame, regardless of whether that's what he's most famous for.