Once upon a time a boon, today I'm unconvinced he's better than a bane.

He can't be ignored, that's for sure....

(Obligatory disclaimers: we were in roughtly the same wider social circle, both worked on the MIT/LMI Lisp Machine fork for a while, were roommates after that, and then were at daggers drawn when I went to work for Unipress Software and I became a "Software Holder" working on Gosling Emacs. I found him to be difficult but not impossible (come to think of it, we both respected each other, which I'm sure helped), but I fell out of contact with him after the '80s when I moved to the D.C. area.)

What are the people who disagree with his cause supposed to vote?

They're politically motivated to claim he's a bane if he's really a boon, and more deviously claim that he's a boon if he's actually a bane.

You can disagree with him and still judge his actions as being helpful overall.

I certainly don't mind him being in my camp when it comes to software patents!