Gotta stop you right there. Hero worship should not be considered a good thing in our industry.
The kernel subsystem maintainers, who actually review the code prior to getting it merged, are the ones with the real power and the necessary knowledge, and I'd argue they are more qualified to oversee the project's future than Torvalds.
1) Technically capable of maintaining the kernel
2) Known to be mainly motivated by technical concerns
If you role the dice with another governance structure, you might get one that is motivated by "collaboration" and then the integrity of the kernel might get compromised by corporate interests. We have no idea how the subsystem maintainers would deal with the politics of a situation without Linus calling shots. We know how Torvalds reacts; rudely :P.
The choice isn't ever going to be Torvalds vs. Sunshine & Roses, the choice is Torvalds vs. Unknown. Because of that, he is practically (but not technically) unique.
I don’t know how we ended up at a point where we believe the only way to tell someone “No” or “You need to do better.” is through incredibly aggressive interactions. I suspect it’s just another hold over from a different time period, and we just never asked “Why?”
It sounds like he believes that treating other humans with respect won’t shatter him and I tend to agree with this assumption. His fundamental personality won’t go away and his skills certainly won’t suddenly disappear.
I’m interested to hear more regarding your comments about corporate interests. While I strongly and completely agree that we must resist letting their interests work their way into being driving forces, I’m not clear why some believe his most egregious behaviors are needed to keep these separations of intersts in place.
No one is more qualified than Linus to run this project and he's done a damn good job so far. Has he made mistakes? Sure. He's human.
Business history & Jack Welch disagree with you. Individual project success is incredibly nuanced and individuals - even in 10k+ orgs - can have massive impacts. Trying to pretend that outliers don't massively influence company success is naive, and MBA programs study these individuals because they are the exception and not the rule.
There's a reason we have Madison Square Garden, Rockefeller Center and Carnegie Mellon. It's not hero worship to acknowledge the contributions of individuals - recognizing a great general doesn't diminish the accomplishments of his army.
I think you could pretty easily adapt Tolstoy's argument to business and say that the primary role of a CEO is to ratify all the on-the-spot decisions his subordinates made as events got away from them.
I think that's what he's good at. They know they'll get called out if they try any BS so they mostly don't. And sometimes Linus overdoes it, but Linux keeps getting better.
Anyone who can do better can make their own fork. So far, everyone still follows Linus.