You are clearly in the author’s group 3: people who say we should just tolerate this sort of thing. In that spirit, I could simply say you’re full of shit and move on, fully knowing you won’t be convinced by anything I say, but I won’t do that.

Instead, I offer you this: the revised email is half the length of the original, and still makes the case as strongly as the first based on the logical arguments. How would you rewrite it?

I don’t mind being told “no, don’t do that; it’s stupid,” provided it’s backed up with logic and an alternative way to proceed. In this case, the second email does this (the alternative way to proceed being just don’t merge the changes, or reword the commit messages).

I have no problem with cursing. I probably curse a little too much, in fact, and here it clearly gets in the way of the message, which is, in both cases “I can live with doing this, but your reasoning as to why we should is wrong.” Or, more bluntly, “no, don’t do this for these stupid reasons.”

What I do have a problem with is gratuitous abuse of someone who’s attempting to make a positive contribution and has, apparently, submitted a reasonable pull request.

I categorically disagree that the revised email makes the same case. The first sentence that Linus wrote indicates that he finds it questionable, but the revised statement puts words into Linus' mouth: "this looks ok but..."

That's not even the same sentiment. Okay versus Questionable.

Not sure why the Tone Police feel it's necessary to do this.

He clearly doesn’t have a problem with the code, otherwise he wouldn’t say he could “live with” the changes. This portion could be better worded to convey the “code is ok, but the rationale is flawed” message. How would you rewrite it?

Au contraire I think it is patently obvious that he does have a problem with the code as written, otherwise why spend the energy to rebut it so vigorously?

He wasn't rebutting the code; he was rebutting the claims about following the C standard, which were made separate from the code. You missed this because its' buried in all of Linus' ranting. Linus merged these changes a few minutes later with no further discussion.