What I find remarkable is that people always talk about the same half-dozen remarks - from an history of 20 years of kernel development completely in the open.

Linus is a fucking remarkable example of civility. He just doesn't have an office where he can shit all over people in private, like so many managers.

If everybody was just saying that those were unfortunate incidents where he lost his temper and agreed they were inappropriate then this debate wouldn't keep happening. Some people aren't prepared to admit that Linus is ever at fault in any way during these episodes. There is even a group of people who think that those episodes are examples of 'telling it like it is' and 'sticking it to the PC crowd' and thus should be replicated as much as possible to make sure your project isn't 'swamped by idiots'. Unfortunately some of the people with that attitude maintain open source projects (and have downvote powers on HN).

I have found buffer overflow bugs in widely used open source projects that I have not informed the developers about, because when I've made previous bug reports they acted like assholes. I don't feel inclined to open myself up for public humiliation just to contribute to their project.

Except the people he usually deals with in a harsh manner are not inferior, rather, from the examples, it is usually the top collaborators

> I have found buffer overflow bugs in widely used open source projects that I have not informed the developers about, because when I've made previous bug reports they acted like assholes

I understand, but did you follow the bug reporting procedure?

Also, some projects may act polite towards outsiders then direct criticism (and bugs) to /dev/null

I don't think it's the best way to manage anything, but I also don't think these outbursts are a big deal.

Your commend would be relevant if my comment was the top of a thread or something. Take a look at the context of the conversation. I wasn't popping in out of context out of nowhere and saying "Linus is an asshole, look at these comments!". I was responding to the specific assertion that these asshole-ish statements can be attributed to cultural differences. I in no way disagree with the idea that "Linus was being a dick in these cases" is very very different from "Linus is a dick".

But in the written medium it really come across is the most harsh way.

But while maintaining the kernel sometimes he needs to get the point across and saying "this is unacceptable, I am disappointed" will not work.

For those examples, when reading the context I (usually) agree with Linus (and with his attitude), and this usually happens when the situation has been building up and people keep repeating those mistakes.

Also, there are people much worse than Linus on the LKML (and subsystem lists), also some people are very polite and helpful.