e.g., if he submitted QEMU as a patch for bochs, and it was rejected (for whatever reason), does anyone think his time was better spent fixing that patch?
He produces ingenious, high quality code, and does so at an unbelievable rate (note, none of his open source projects is related to his day job as far as I can tell - except perhaps the ASN 1 compiler).
I think he is arguably optimizing his contribution to society, and I hope he keeps doing that. Let people who can't produce the core do all the integration/politics/detail stuff.
It's worthy of note that his free software makes him plenty of money.
It's also no surprise that he doesn't feel the need to write about himself.
Probably still is, and netgem is his cover.
Considering that you apparently aren't fooled by that cover up, it can't be that much worth anyway.
Finally someone who has the guts to write this!!! So true, so true ...
Not that criticizing GNU is at all verboten at HN, though, so your point still stands.
Look at his ouerve, he doesn't bother integrating any of his projects into anything else, or put more charitably, dance to the politics of other peoples' projects.
I don't blame him. Contributing to GNU projects as an outsider is a PITA.