Linus has earned the right to that tone, care about Linux or not. Now when some unknown emulates it, that's the time to take note (and ignore that person ever after).
This attitude is breeding the jerks and aholes in this industry. It is far too common to encounter teams and communities where in professionalism is accepted on a sliding scale of "accomplishment". If you accept this type of disrespectful/demeaning behavior from one "special" person then you will get it from everyone. Eventually, people tire of this type of nonsense and leave. You may be able to backfill their talent, but regular churn per mantle inhibits the creativity and velocity of the group. Linus is extremely fortunate that folks are paid very well to take it, and many very large companies (e.g. IBM, Red Hat, Intel, etc) have a significant portion of their long term livilihoods dependent on Linux.
Specifically the issue is that if offensiveness is considered a perk of being amazing, then people who think of themselves as amazing are more likely to be offensive to demonstrate that they are amazing. Sounds silly, right? But that is what leads to prima donnas.
Well quoted. It's always fascinated (and worried) me how the human brain allows for the elevation of certain people to God-like status, and then excuses behavior they would normally find abhorrent.
The important thing to note about Erik's behavior is that occurred on Usenet, and unlike the mailing list or places like HN, on Usenet, there were (I have not looked closely at Usenet for about 12 years) no "owners" or moderators for a newsgroup and no way for the newsgroup considered as a "community" or a "collective" to enforce behavioral norms (e.g., around politeness) on individual posters.
Individuals regularly complained about Erik's nastiness, saying (correctly, IMHO) that he was scaring people away from Lisp.
Also, I never saw any of the intense admiration for Erik on comp.lang.lisp when Erik was alive that I have seen on Hacker News. The quality of his Lisp code and the insightfulness of his posts won him respect from many on comp.lang.lisp (specifically, those who accepted that there were almost no limits on speech on Usenet), but he would definitely not have been tolerated for long in most places on the internet where technical subjects are seriously discussed today (particularly HN, which has higher politeness bars than most such places) if he were posting with the same hostility that he did on comp.lang.lisp.
All good points, but I would debate about whether newsgroups would not be considered a "community". A few I'd been involved in in (lord, so many...) years past certainly had all the hallmarks of one. c.l.l was large enough to have perhaps diluted that, but the lack of an owner I don't think is necessary.
But yes, those were different days in different contexts.
You know what, here's a thought. HN is a place that emphasizes civility. Would Linus be allowed to act like that here, or would we say that he's earned the right to act like that here? Double standards suck because something has to break to accommodate them, and often the things that break are the things that everyone else likes when the world is a nicer and more innocent place.