Why on earth does anyone pay any attention to esr? He wrote some Perl scripts 15 years ago and a bad essay 10 years ago and now for some reason he's lauded as a

Why on earth does anyone pay any attention to esr? He wrote some Perl scripts 15 years ago and a bad essay 10 years ago and now for some reason he's lauded as a champion of open source rather than the self-aggrandizing blowhard that he is