alt Hacker NewsI can't help but disagree with you 100%. Brilliant technicians aren't automatically role models, and both men have plenty of characteristics that shouldn't be emulated.
Their positive influence on open source is real; that doesn't make them, as people, role models.
Technical abilities are nothing more than big muscles. No one with any depth at all would mean anything like that when they say things like "role model" and "saint", and no one with a lick of sense would assume anyone else would.