In general, this is good practice for working on a team. However, given that we're talking about Linus Torvalds' opinions on what makes code 'elegant' or 'good

In general, this is good practice for working on a team. However, given that we're talking about Linus Torvalds' opinions on what makes code 'elegant' or 'good taste', I'd say it's implicit that we're talking within the domain of low level, high performance code, such as kernel code.