What this means, of course, is that anyone who exhibits even a shred of self-confidence will probably be accused, by someone somewhere, of being arrogant. The symptoms are largely the same. The difference is one of degree, and of results.
Arrogance is hard to diagnose without the benefit of hindsight. It is now evident that Marc Andreesen was being arrogant when he proclaimed that Netscape would kill the Microsoft desktop. But Linus Torvalds was apparently not being arrogant when he claimed that he could build a better VC system than CVS in less than a month, because... he did.
I don't understand people who say success justifies arrogance (or worse, makes it not-arrogance altogether). Success just shields you from the consequences of your arrogance.
Yes, but whose attitude? That of the "arrogant" person, or that of the person who interprets a certain set of actions and statements as "arrogance"?
The problem is that there's only one (e.g.) Linus Torvalds, but he has thirty thousand critics, of all shapes and sizes and cultures, with a widely varying range of personalities. Some of his critics are bound to have no sense of humor. Some of them are bound to have a tin ear for dialogue. Some of them are bound to be jealous as hell. Some of them are enemies. Some of them are trolls.