Although I've heard a lot of others disagree, I like the fact that Linus' posts are straight and to the point. No sugar-coating or euphemisms, just telling the hard reality like it is.
...Is a good way to turn otherwise-skilled people with some problematic but fixable habits into people who refuse to work with you ever again.
Brutal honesty works with computers, but it's not always the best policy for keeping humans productive. Linus gets away with it because he's a celebrity, and moreover the right kind of celebrity. These comments would look very different if the public mockery was coming from, say, Steve Jobs.
He's been this way long before he was a celebrity coder. This is just how he runs Linux, and I think that is evidence enough that the process works for him.
The team itself might be a self-selecting group of people who can work with Linus. But, overall, I'd say that his brutal honesty works "well enough". It might not be a good way to run a corporate project, but for an OS kernel, the benevolent dictator model seems to work pretty well.
I wonder how the kernel groups at Apple and Microsoft work though... or how FreeBSD is organized... that'd be an interesting comparison.
Then again, a hard question is: Do we want developers with problematic habits working on the linux kernel?
I'd put the core linux system into a situation special enough to make it the correct decision to toss everyone but the best of the best of the linus-compatible developers out. It's not a pretty decision, but after a certain point of importance, I can understand that decision.
I tend to think of Linus as being similar to Steve Jobs - brilliant but arrogant srseholes whose products I enjoy using, but I would never work with them without some very serious compensation for putting up with the shit. Which is where this becomes a problem for Linus. Jobs could hey away with it, because he could pay people enough that they accepted the bad treatment. Linus, not so much.
It's clear that that the kernel dev guys and Kay have a history. I wonder if Kay would have been more open to accepting change requests to systemd without Linus's bad behaviour. It bears thinking about...
No you're not getting it. Linus is not like this often. And he's not like this to people who are innocent bystanders. Linus will only chew you up if you're an engineer he knows personally that should know better.
What you have to understand is that these people are not on Linus' payroll, so he has little direct power over them. Screaming at people is one of only two forms of power that Linux can exert, the other being withholding merging of code, which is even more extreme. And these incidents actually come up rather seldom when you think about how much code is submitted to the Linux kernel, which I think is a testament to how well Linus' management is working.
Because as with many things, it's a matter of perspective. For Kay, this code works as intended. So if you want him to change it, don't open a bug, discuss it on the mailing list. This does not seem like a completely unreasonable request on Kay's part. Note also that Kay does not get personal in this response. Compare and contrast with Linus then calling Kay a "fking primadonna". Now, whether you agree with Kay or not, do you really think that Linus's approach is going to get him what he wants?
Again, I have the greatest respect for Linus's achievements, but I personally feel that he uses the power those achievements have bought him to be a bully, and that gets no respect from me.
