I actually fear the day, when somebody more polite gets in and lets it known, (unintentionally, of course), that shitty, rookie code is now fine, that being lazy and not treating the trust that has been placed upon you by being a subsystem maintainer for the most important software project of the 21st century - if you don't consider that an important enough responsibility and are willing to embarrass Linus, who put his trust in you, then yeah, I don't mind him being rude.
I would mind if he was rude to first time contributors fixing a typo, that's not who he's rude at.
He can't fire these people as such, many of them work for sponsors who pay his salary and he has no direct control over them, so being rude is one of his last resorts - especially since it's hard to express just how hardly displeased over email WITHOUT being "rude".
He does give feedback, if you take a look at LKML he's only "rude" to the repeating offenders, not those who make a one-time honest mistake, but rather to those who got too comfy to actually review the code they're sending to Linus as "reviewed".
I am not saying Linus is always right, but if you actually follow his reasoning, it makes a great amount of sense.
For what it's worth, coworkers have pointed out to me how much of a bully Linus has been. I'm not sure it matters that the bullying wasn't directed at them. Bullying is still bullying.
To put it another way, would you want your manager to speak to you how Linus spoke to Mauro? Even if it was deserved?
Linus also doubles down and insists it's ok: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/linus-...
We have civility rules on HN for a reason, for example. I don't think civility is artificial in the ways that Linus is saying. You can be courteous to someone you're in command of.
It's much more newsworthy that Linus was rude, than that he wasn't. News is biased. Who knew!
I disagree with this kind of pluralism. Communication style and skill matter deeply, but styles aren't simply "different but equal". In the current context, it's easy for technical people to dismiss everything but the "content", usually a kind of reductio ad absurdum to "technical content". But communication, by definition, involves the audience's perception. If your communication style inhibits your audience's understanding or even their willingness to listen, then you are simply a bad communicator.
Case study: some years back, I was heavily involved in hand drumming. A really excellent master drummer had recently immigrated and settled in my area. The community was very supportive, but the local students had a serious problem with him: he was an abusive asshat as an instructor. This was definitely a cultural style, one that was the ubiquitous norm in his home culture, particularly with a large body of children as the primary students. But it was absolutely off-putting to enthusiastic, self-motivated Western adults who were there to learn. They weren't making mistakes because they were lazy or dumb or inattentive, but just because they were new. Fortunately, community members realized this, supported him, and he switched his style in record time... to both his own and his students delight. His own skills and his ability to mentor were never in doubt, but his communication style utterly destroyed his ability to actually communicate effectively.
So yes, I'll agree that cultural understanding is really important for both the communicator and their audience. But there's a line to be drawn at outright abuse. Just because it's the norm elsewhere doesn't make it acceptable anywhere. Some approaches to communication are simply more effective than others. Failing to realize the human impact of your communication style on your audience, or worse, realizing that it's negative and doubling down on it, make you an ineffective jerk.
It's certainly not that simple. This only makes sense if your goal is to communicate in a culturally-agnostic manner, which is not something you can reliably do. It's like flag burning: you can't really communicate the same point better in another way. It at least makes some sense to tromp on people's emotions in a context where you are trying to teach them that their emotions are an obstacle to success.
It is important for the teacher to understand the student, but it is arguably more important for the student to understand the teacher.
But sometimes an asshat is just an asshat. There are boundaries of negativity past which it's basically never productive to cross, and telling people who've received that kind of behavior that they should just grow a thick skin ... is pointing the finger the wrong direction.
None of this is assigning rightness or wrongness to anyone, it's just group dynamics. If he drives people away, he may be OK with that. It may even be his desired outcome. There's nothing wrong with him running things the way he sees fit, and there's nothing wrong with other people thinking he's an ahole and going their separate ways. I'm much more sympathetic to the latter than the former though. In my experience, leaders who are too focused on getting people to respect their authority above all else tend to be the "B's" in the "A's hire A's, B's hire C's" management cliche.