Because, you know, in your workplace, you are in an actual inferiority position. Your boss is the one that says how much are you going to be paid next month (or

Because, you know, in your workplace, you are in an actual inferiority position. Your boss is the one that says how much are you going to be paid next month (or IF your are going to be paid), or whether you are going to work in a nice project or maintaining a 20 years old codebase. If he bullies you, verbally or otherwise, facing up or quitting might have dire consequences. On the other hand, in most open source projects you contribute what you want, where you want, and if you don't like the project lead, it takes you as much as closing the browser window to quit. That said, I don't really know if this is the situation of the people working directly under Linus. ¿Aren't the key kernel developers usually paid by big corporations to work there?