In reality, being 'forceful' will almost always be perceived as being kind of an asshole. BUT - there's a world of difference between being 'forceful perceived

In reality, being 'forceful' will almost always be perceived as being kind of an asshole. BUT - there's a world of difference between being 'forceful perceived as jerk' and 'demeaning and needlessly insulting or derogatory'. Never a reason to put people down. In Linus' 2008 speech at Google talking about Git, he said he created it partly to avoid politics - he can just have people copy his stuff into their own repo and go off yonder and not have to deal with them.