Instead what I got was "It'd be a real shame if you're no longer around", and other equally dismissive behavior, and considering this was a situation in which a maintainer was pushing for something that would likely have led to security vulnerabilities and was being dismissive of criticism I didn't feel that was something we could let slide.
Priorities, people.
Context matters, and also, if we're going to have standards for professional conduct they do need to be about more than just language.
We shouldn't be punching down, but we shouldn't be insulating maintainers from criticism when they're being incompetent, either.
Abusing others individually in public, but expecting a quiet word on the side about “the overall situation” when it comes to your own behavior. I hope you realize something from this.
Taking his personal struggles out of kernel development and onto Hacker News was the escalation – pointing out his hypocrisy is only trying to get people who agree with him to realize that they’re wrong.
So you want to take the power to produce taken away from the producers and coalesce it into the hands of those who do not produce for the sole purpose of controlling those who do produce.
You're literally a walking Orwell quote.