My understanding was that Linus is cooling his jets a bit?

Yes, he wants to stop using insults, which I think is good. But he still won't tolerate BS, or timewasting.

It is also a cultural thing, being from Southern Europe took me some time to get used to the Northern Europe approach to be direct without any yes and buts.

Linux development is distributed (largely, between commercial entities), not really "open". If you aren't intimately familiar with the culture, you're likely to be ignored unless your issue also affects somebody who is.

Being open for collaboration does not mean anyone and anything is welcomed. But I could just write to the kernel mailing list (I think, it used to be like this) - but yeah, since I am not a kernel hacker, I do not have anything meaningful to contribute, I would be ignored, or told to shut up - as it should be. I won't go there and say "hey you know, it would be really good if linux would support xyz ASAP". I have no right to do this and this would not be welcome - yet in many other open source projects, this is quite the norm. People come with this expectation. Some even might have donated 5$ and think now they own the place. Well, no.