My comment on another forum where ESR's post was discussed (complete with inadvertent but funny typo), which explains why I think ESR (and RMS) just don't get it:

James Gosling has an interesting take on Jobs being a "control freak":

    He was famously difficult to work for and
    unrelentingly demanding of perfection. I
    interviewed for jobs with him 3 times: once before
    he was fired, once at NeXT and once after he
    returned. Each was a long lunch at The Good Earth.
    Each was a wonderful, intriguing conversation, but
    I left each thinking, ‘No, I can’t work for
    this man: he’s mad!’ That visionary madness
    drove him and his company with a tremendous force.
    He was personally not an engineer or a designer,
    but he had a tremendous sense for excellence. Many
    companies use ‘focus groups’ to help them
    refine products, but not Apple: they just had
    Steve. He was often criticized for being a
    ‘control freak,’ but that was all in pursuit
    of excellence: anything out of his control was out
    of his ability to improve.  He didn’t just have
    a sense for Apple’s products, he had a sense for
    Apple’s customers and what would delight them.
    As much as he was devoted to Apple, he was more
    devoted to Apple’s customers. One of the biggest
    drivers of Apple’s success in recent years is
    the delight their customers feel in every part of
    the process, even something as simple as opening a
    box is thought through carefully. Every detail
    matters.

The thing that really stood out in the giant collection of comments that have been published about Jobs over the last 3 days by almost everyone of any importance in the tech world is how many of these people were positively influenced by him.

This includes some of Jobs and Apple's strongest competitors--for instance when Larry Page took over as Google CEO in April, he says that Jobs reached out to give him advice and knowledge to be CEO even though Jobs was very sick by then. Note that this is well after Apple and Google had become fierce rivals in mobile.

That's how things work in Silicon Valley. Companies can be bitter rivals, but the people that run them can be friends and help each other. Business and people are separate.

What I find sad about the comments of RMS and ESR is that they are so one dimensional. They view people like they are in comic books--they must either be heroes who are good all the time, or villains who constantly plot evil from their secret volcano lair while stoking a cat. Real life humans aren't like that.