Let's put this in a vacuum (since I'm not too familiar with the whole saga over time and I'd like to see an honest response.) > It's telling a contributor that

Let's put this in a vacuum (since I'm not too familiar with the whole saga over time and I'd like to see an honest response.) > It's telling a contributor that their contributions are worthless, cannot be fixed, and other ad-hominem angry insults that just fosters a macho, jockish atmosphere in Linux that has demonstrably alienated capable contributors. I'll quote bits one at a time. > It's telling a contributor that their contributions are worthless, cannot be fixed What if they are? How do you handle the situation? > and other ad-hominem angry insults I would argue that saying some patch is worthless and cannot be fixed isn't ad-hominem. But I'd like to get your view, since it seems you've read a lot on the topic and care about the OSS community. (Edit: As an aside, my personal policy in this regard is temperance in my reaction, and this is especially easy when written.)