One thing that's reasonably forgivable about Torvalds' flames is that they tend to be directed at senior-ish people who he knows and who are mostly peers in the

One thing that's reasonably forgivable about Torvalds' flames is that they tend to be directed at senior-ish people who he knows and who are mostly peers in the free-software community. That's a fairly different context than if he were flaming random newbies (or people who were his subordinates/employees). Also it's fairly rare, and you'll often see him engaging in a normal tone again further down in the same thread.