He's an outright toxic and abusive person. Characterizing a lack of toxic, abusive behavior as "professional soft spoken cubicle workers approach" is disingenuous.
So what people mean with that is not that he actually has a toxic effect, but that they dislike his tone.
Having a 'toxic' personality does not mean he will produce bad code. Two completely different things.
I said that the claim of those saying he's language is toxic is that his language poisons the Linux kernel community development.
And yet, I counter-argue, I see it doing just fine, and going from strength to strength, over the last 25 years. If there's any toxicity effect, I wont see it affecting much, if anything.
I could accept that it might have led some people who could have otherwise contributed away. But I don't see this having any substantial effect on Linux's development.
Perhaps it's even beneficial (since the outcome and results from Linux's development team is better than from any other Unix-like OSS OS, with their supposedly not toxic leaders).
If that freedom of language is all it takes to keep Linus happy, and stewarding the project as well as he has done all these decades, then so be it...
Several, but no one that mattered enough with respect to Linux for his opinion to matter in return.
His OS, his rules. Others can always fork it if they have an issue with that.
It seems to have worked fine as a gatekeeping technique for the last 25+ years, even if it hurts some feelings. Linus goes for an in-the-trenches, rough camaraderie, approach, rather than a "professional soft spoken cubicle workers" approach.