I think it's less "passion" and "focus", more his position as the Linux lead giving him first-hand experience with change control at scale. He didn't need a product manager to gather requirements, because he already knew them.
That's basically what ItsMonkk is saying, but I think it's worth making it more explicit. Because a one-in-a-million engineer is not replicable, but a deep understanding of your users' needs is.
That being said, I agree with the general point that having vision and trusting your developers with their vision can be a winning strategy.