I am not saying that he is not correct or that he is wrong in trying to enlighten Felipe, I just think he could have been more respectful. If his explanation of his reasoning and logic tends to look more like flame than an explanation I think it should be time to save the email and go do something else for a bit. I also think that posting this and getting it attention as a 'look at this guy, he got flamed!' bit is silly as well.
I agree with your observation but let's remember that we are talking about Linus. He usually replies with a flamethrower - mainly when he believes in another way of doing things, but in the end he has a point. And that point is flame worth (IMO).
Being respectful, polite or sometimes even flammable are not contradictory. A well timed flame instance can act as a catalyst for understanding and development, at least that has worked with me. -- well-done many times
I totally understand your points of sometimes the point justifies the attention grabbing. But I also think that other measures might be worth taking other than flaming - like I often see the use of swears in titles to grab attention and help convey the importance of the subject, I think that alternative measures would be much more reasonable and still achieve the same goal.
Agreed. And that is a good observation, what is the actual goal of L.T.? I can only guess -- but perhaps the flaming serves as a tactics he utilizes to save one of the most precious we all have, the time.
Note that this email comes at the end of a really long thread arguing this point (reversion in stable trees) on LKML. The discussion also spilled onto G+. I'm not at all surprised that Linus (among other people) might be losing some patience.
If you know physics, think of
a release (and the tag is associated with it) as "collapsing the wave
function".
What does ontological fabric of reality mean? (besides being a good headline)
As a consciousness had to apply the tag the wave function was already collapsed. A tag is more like adding another dimension to reality.