I didn't mean that nobody was working on it. I've been aware of Lessig's work on the CC, for example, since its inception. BTW, 'Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace' is an excellent read. I don't see eye-to-eye with Lessig in some areas, but politics aside, he's dead on in a lot things.
I'm certainly biased towards software. So the work of ESR, RMS, and Perens is much more familiar to me than anyone in the hardware arena. But once you jump into Open Source and Free Software, it's hard to not hear of ESR and RMS. I've been piddling around with this for about 6 months (really? 
) and I haven't heard of anyone with a similar level of name recognition. Perhaps I'm just not looking in the right places. The closest thing I've seen to recognition of an evangelist was Wired's piece on Limor Fried.