> The problem with cultural differences is that the effect of this might be not the intended one ‘Be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you se

> The problem with cultural differences is that the effect of this might be not the intended one ‘Be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send’ has two clauses for a reason, namely that trying to gauge the effect of what one says on every possible group will fail. Sure, someone you tell ‘no, this is utter crap, go back and fix it’ might find that rude and will never talk to you again, but on the other hand, someone might understand ‘this could be improved here and there and maybe you could change that’ as ‘oh, that’s fine apart from some trivialities’. > You need to be someone important to be able to afford it and Linus (still) is. I wouldn’t say you need to be someone important, you just have to be in a position where you don’t have to care about possibly maybe hurting the delicate feelings of the other person.