For some people, there is the idea that because I do not like the source of the idea or product, that the idea or product must be bad (logical fallacy called the genetic fallacy fwiw). Gaston Glock, like a lot of driven folks, is not going to be confused with Mother Teresa, in his business dealings or personal life. That has no affect and should not on the genius of his design work on the Glock. Please note that I said design and not invention because the principles and part types were used by others to make firearms but Glock put the manufacturing, parts design, marketing, and innovative package together as something for militaries and the police of nations to use. Once those bids were secured, the general public wanted the same.
The design of the Glock handgun, not just the use of polymer (see H&K VP70 for that one), but his throwing out the rules on how to make safe and affordable handguns function reliably has justly made Gaston Glock at least as famous to contemporary America as Sam Colt or JMB was in his heyday. He is similar to Eugene Stoner as a disruptor in the market by applying modern materials and manufacturing to drive down the price of making them. As a result, those that were using more traditional hammer driven designs had to scramble in order to meet his challenge in reliability, cost, and ease of use.
BTW, I have shot Glocks and do not own any simply because I do not like their aesthetics and they fit my hand worse than other handguns. Personally, I prefer S&W Third Generation DAO in semi auto or the Sig D/A action because of their resemblance to a revolver trigger pull and I prefer a good revolver above semi-automatics. That being said, if you own a striker fired polymer semi-auto, you have been affected by Gaston Glock just as someone firing a revolver is giving homage to Sam Colt or Daniel B. Wesson.
Oh, and one last thing on his design. Compared with his contemporary market challengers at the time, Glocks could be assembled and disassembled by someone with about one day's worth of training and the parts purposefully were made were cheap and easy to fix and replace without fitting. Smith and Wesson Third Generation semi autos or revolvers required a lot more training and much less parts commonality to get reliable function and 1911 maintenance required a much higher level than either of those two. Sigs and Berettas are also more complex to fix than a Glock and all except Glock can require fitting (not talking about aftermarket Glock stuff here).
Some of us actually enjoy tinkering with mechanisms but I suspect that we are in the minority.