Linus is a dick. Theo is a dick. No argument from anyone there. That's the Linux kernel though, and I would argue that has the same problem of scaring off potential devs.

It's the wider community I'm talking about. Mailing lists, forums, etc. It is a pain in the ass to entertain dumb questions and give the same answers over and over, but it's how you turn noobs into developers.

Not accepting Github pull requests because they're not up to Kernel standards is not exactly proof of unforgivingness.

The comment you refer to isn't to the (noob) pull request author (Roman), it's to a troll (Joseph) that has since deleted his comments.