Lots of male developers thought Linus was an asshole.

And he didn't "Have his wang cut" - He sincerely apologized, he chose to step away from the kernel for a period to work on.. well not being such an asshole.. and now he's back being a good community steward. Which seems like a fine outcome?

The pendulum has swung from "we give powerful, highly skilled, or accomplished people a carte blanche license to be total assholes" to a mentality where we're willing to ostracize people for certain types of assholery.

Has it swung too far? Perhaps. I have a rule: "society always over-corrects."

Should it swing back? No. Some moderation might be in order, but I'm not interested in going back to the time of "but Michael Jackson was so talented!"

(I'm not comparing Stallman to Michael Jackson, just using the latter as an example of a mentality.)

I don't personally have a dog in this fight, but I do get the sense that perhaps this was not an isolated incident but more of the straw that broke the camel's back.