[kahawe]

I never understood where his "claim to fame" really came from? Apart from publishing and then maintaining a pre-existing dictionary on his website, publishing one of MANY books on Open Source and cursing admins with fetchmail, he hardly contributed to or founded any REALLY big projects or coded a lot like Linus or RMS did or did anything of real substance - but esr was always one of THOSE names during his heyday and he would go to great lengths telling everyone how "the community" selected him to be some sort of open source Keanu Reeves/Neo...

[sesqu]

Writing has historically been very important for recognition, especially current writing.

[cypherpunks]

He's an exceptionally good communicator and has very strong soft skills, and applies them to self-promotion. He's also good at politics (as in convincing crowds of people -- not so much at interacting and making long-term connections with individuals). A lot of this has to do with feeling out crowds, and telling them what they want to hear. He's also got a slightly underdeveloped moral compass, which always helps (he was willing to be a little bit sleazy and subtly undermine competitors). That's mostly what it takes to get famous. He was also the only person, after RMS, who was arrogant enough to take credit for the whole movement.