[elcritch]

Overall I believe his language has gotten better. Yes it's still a bit abrasive but he's also not directly calling people themselves an idiot, which is a big improvement.

Reading through the whole PR comment, you see that this is a repeating pattern in the printk system:

> And guys, I want to make it really clear how disappointed I am with > the printk tree lately. There seems to be some kind of hardline > religious fervor having taken over to make these kinds of "this is how > it has to be done, screw any sanity or common sense".

As an end user who recently used printk with PREEMPT_RT to debug a driver, I appreciate Torvald's insistence here.

> Even if he didn't like the patch, calling it "unintelligent" and "idiotic" doesn't accomplish anything.

Perhaps not, or perhaps it's an effective way to snap people out of a "religious fervor". As a developer I'd be upset at having my code called "idiotic", but would generally prefer it over someone thinking the code is idiotic but not saying it and getting stonewalled or hiding behind corporate doublespeak.

[lmb]

Counter point from Gleixner which is worth reading for us in the peanut gallery: https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/87r11qp63n.ffs@tglx/

[stjohnswarts]

If I can do it, he can do it. Someone as clever as him could write a filter/plugin if nothing else to flag messages with too many curse words and personal attacks.