[coldpie]

You're extrapolating from a single email. Linus and many other LKML devs frequently berate and belittle contributors with personal attacks. They're not hard to find, in fact he's famous for them. Sharp was responding to the long history of contributor abuse, and it happened to be in that particular series of emails.

[digi_owl]

Famous in the same way that 24/7 news can turn a anthill into a mountain.

If you were to read through Torvalds complete LKML log, likely a very small percentage would be harsh. And they in turn would be preceded by someone that should know better violating how kernel development is supposed to be done.

Torvalds have asfaik never woken up, put on his slippers, rolled a die, and started going after someone without cause.