For a comment that talks about taking things too literally, I think you've pinned too many of those separate points together. There was no suggestion that, for example, Linux is successful because of the way Linus talks to developers. It could be despite it.

But I will say that a lot of the people complaining about it have absolutely zero experience developing at even a fraction the scale Linux works at. Thousands of large contributions from hundreds of developers every release. Keeping a handle on that demands a strict submission framework.

But sure, everybody and their mother has a go at Linus because after two decades hammering out these rules, he loses his shit when developers and companies submit crap that ignores the basic minimum requirements for submission. I don't think you can say that his curt approach has done more harm than good. I'm sure it does both, to different audiences.