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It's not "a few public emails." It's many, many examples over many, many years from a massive, high-volume email list that represents the bulk of the work done

It's not "a few public emails." It's many, many examples over many, many years from a massive, high-volume email list that represents the bulk of the work done on the Linux kernel. It's clear from the very public, recurrent fallout from Linus's behavior that it is not a matter of camaraderie or simple outsider misunderstanding. I agree, context matters. It's precisely because of the context that this language is not tolerable. The LKML is not a private Slack channel for friends. Absolutely, among friends, such talk is generally tolerated and isn't a sign of rudeness or disrespect. My friends and I do the same thing in private channels. But in public in a professional setting is not at all the place for that.

taeric 10y ago
Compared to how many emails he sends in total, it is barely even a few. By and large, you will not find a more friendly maintainer. If you keep ignoring him while trying to get something into his project, he will get rude. And this is the funny thing about it. Even the people he "explodes" on usually get a lot of friendly "stop" messages from him well before any inflammatory message comes out. Only real exceptions I can think of is that he will meet an insult with an insult. Which, ironically, can go a decent way to making everyone else feel safer in the environment. Edit to add: I do want to quickly add that as much praise as I can offer Linus in this regard, Knuth really is on another level. I do not intend to compare them.