This is bad. One of the things that kept all these people in check was fear that Linus will yell at them if they're sloppy or lazy and deliver crap quality. If

This is bad. One of the things that kept all these people in check was fear that Linus will yell at them if they're sloppy or lazy and deliver crap quality. If he mellows his tone, the already low architectural and system engineering quality will drop to dismal levels. His apology has nothing to do with professionalism, which in this case is system and kernel engineering; resist all attempts at behavioral correction any time someone tries to pass it off as unprofessional, because it is that someone trying to subjugate you with their values and morals. And that's just so inherently wrong: nobody should be attempting to subjugate anybody. We must stop such people from trying to pass their judgment on others as "being uncivil" or "unprofessional"; it's not right, and has nothing to do with how well one writes code or designs hardware: the level of quality is the level of professionalism. As the old adage says: "if you can't take the heat, get the hell out of the kitchen!"