[iamnothere]

He may not be, but the product has been. Same goes with Theo and OpenBSD.

Hyper-productive people are often volatile. Putting up with it is a necessary tradeoff, as the systems they produce often fill a niche that nobody else will serve adequately.

[dokyun]

Guys like Theo have a baseline to uphold and I think decades of dealing with the public on an open project with specific goals that need to be met would turn anyone sour. People respect him for his actual work though, like they used to with Torvalds before he got bought out by IBM.

Drew I think is just kind of a dick who has a history of putting his personal crusades before delivering a product people want. I remember a few years back sourcehut being reported as unstable and he went and lashed out at people who were complaining to him about it instead of fixing the issues. And he banned crypto projects cause he doesn't like them, at least Codeberg held it to a vote.

Patrick Volkerding is a pretty stable guy, I think he's the model more BDFLs should strive to be.

[iamnothere]

Patrick is an unusual exception; I’d actually put people like Drew, Theo, and pre-corporate Linus in the midpoint. The opposite extreme of Patrick would be unfortunate cases like Reiser and Ian Murdock.

I think Drew suffers a little from lack of focus. I greatly appreciate his work on Harelang, sway, and aerc for instance, but these are quite far from his Sourcehut work. (I can see how aerc and Sourcehut dovetail with the plaintext email focus, at least.)