Please forive the lenthy disclaimer/preamble: I very strongly believe that when we consider some subset of a person's words or their work - that we should treat it on its own merits, and not contaminated with tangential arguments about the person themself or their other, unrelated words, claims, works, etc.

So I mentioned my position (that he is an embarrassment) to make clear to the parent poster that I wasn't defending ESR per se - before immediately declaring that our shared distaste of ESR is not relevant to the discussion. I'm replying out of courtesy, since you asked, but I don't think discussing negative aspects of ESR is relevant to the larger topics here.

> more authentic explanation of these ethos (cause, frankly, I though that ESR did a good job there)?

I think ESR's comments on the hacker ethos are just fine. His other positions and writing in no way detracts from this. I think there are many places where ESR did 'a good job'.

> is there something that I missed completely?

I don't have any fair or balanced sources to share with you, but if you'd like to see links cherry picked by people who have a heavy anti-ESR bias, you can check out the not-so-rational "rationalwiki". I don't endorse nor agree with all that's said here, but it sheds light on why some people dislike ESR.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond#Footnotes

Edit: A more concise summary is found in this person's views: http://cal-harding.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-i-hate-eric-raym...

Also, see daveloyall's comments on this page. I don't fully agree with him either, but they are illuminating.