It’s fair to be out of the loop. I wish I was, because dissenting for any reason is seen as being a villain or a troll.

For a little context though the freebsd code of conduct was instantiated in 14th February 2018 - the Linux one was altered to be the current one on September 21st of the same year (which is when the Linux CoC controversy began).

He was quite abusive actually, not "abusive".

You seem to be interpreting the parent as using scare-quotes to disagree with the idea that Linus's behavior was "abusive."

But the parent comment was, as far as I can tell, intending to use regular quotation marks, in the way a journalist does (and as I just did)—to mention what someone else said, without endorsing or denying that opinion as their own, in order to avoid an argument.

(Personally, I think more things people describe should be put in quotation marks. A lot of Internet arguments are started by people trying to argue others out of beliefs they don't actually personally have.)

Quotes only work with attribution