"He was not attacking the person who wrote the code." Linus: "...anybody who thinks that the above is [acceptable] is just incompetent and out to lunch." That

"He was not attacking the person who wrote the code." Linus: "...anybody who thinks that the above is [acceptable] is just incompetent and out to lunch." That's a direct attack on the coder (and anyone else who thought the code was acceptable.) The remainder of the rant is written in such as way as to castigate the coder indirectly by insulting the work. If that wasn't the intent, such emotional and abusive language is completely unnecessary to get the point across. I would not want to work in an environment where strong emotional language used to criticize employees "work" is considered acceptable.