I'm going to give an answer that some people won't like, and to be honest I don't like either: Richard Stallman. I no longer care about the "super coder" or t

I'm going to give an answer that some people won't like, and to be honest I don't like either: Richard Stallman. I no longer care about the "super coder" or the "smart dude" or the "rock star" because it doesn't really matter. Good and bad coders are both capable of getting things done. Stallman is, for lack of a better word, a zealot. For as much as that may be off putting at times, he really isn't wrong. Closed source and closed design, starting at the hardware layer, has bitten us rather badly in recent days. This isn't the first time, it won't be the last, and until we collectively demand more it simply won't change. There are other people who I have deep respect for and look up to, Bunnie Huang and Salvatore Sanfilippo spring to mind as people I keep an eye on there are more but those are off the top of my head.