> would it be that much better if Linus et al. were turning away people politely with words like "this code doesn't meet our standards of quality because X Y Z"

> would it be that much better if Linus et al. were turning away people politely with words like "this code doesn't meet our standards of quality because X Y Z" It seems quite reasonable to imagine that more of those people would come back and try again if they were treated politely. Working with new contributors takes time at first, but it's an investment that you hope will pay back when they're productive core developers.