He certainly is a controversial person for multiple reasons, not just one.

The criticism that he is a ‘free software extremist’ and other ‘his ideas are utopian hippie nonsense’ type ‘criticisms’ are obviously a farce to conceal anti-freedom ideologies in general.

The one that eventually got him “cancelled”… I think he was just talking a bit clunkily. If you actually read into what he said, he is straight up right. Just the way and the timing he said that in is… unfortunate. But the large smear campaign to get him deplatformed was based on false ideas of what he actually said.

The only problem I have with the man is that he sometimes holds crude opinions on things he doesn’t know a whole bunch about for unreflected reasons. He has a lot of good opinions, but he also has a bunch of eh ones.

But (and this is a big but): he was never meant to be a corporate PR spokesperson. He’s a hacker. He’s chaotic good. He has a big mouth. But he’s lovable for it. Sometimes he talks shit, yes, but in personal correspondence, he totally used they/them for me. He’s not meant to be a big PR guy choosing the path of least resistance and most precise wording. He is more of a hacker collective kind of guy, and behaves like it, like a guy talking smack in a bar who gets shoved in the limelight as if this was Hollywood. I respect him for keeping his youthful attitude and not becoming another bland face in the tech world. Tech and hacking was a juvenile hobby.