Your sense of how leadership works is really screwed up. Nothing in TFA suggests being "weak". Quite the opposite, per the author's intent, and I agree: "It's

Your sense of how leadership works is really screwed up. Nothing in TFA suggests being "weak". Quite the opposite, per the author's intent, and I agree: "It's still forceful and unambiguous." The most scathing responses I've ever written in my professional career contained zero profanity, zero ad-hominem attacks, or other attempts at verbal abuse. But they still had unambiguous and devastating impact. If your only concept of strength of leadership amounts to "be maximum asshole", then you have a really horrific concept of leadership. Instead, I'll offer this. In my experience, great leadership is the skill of getting a group of people to take action on a cause without having/using authority over them. Instead, you seem to think leadership is about taking authority over people by being a jerk to them. No one's saying that Linus shouldn't be a strong advocate for the kernel. This is entirely about his refusal to acknowledge or improve lousy communication skills that obfuscate his generally excellent technical arguments, and needlessly push away contributors who have actual self respect.