Linus has been trying to calm down in recent years, in large part because he decided he no longer wanted to be lumped in with the crowd that endlessly complains about political correctness.
Yeah this is good stuff, and why I felt bad about making the comparison. Not saying Theo is in that camp, but Linus is trying to be less abrasive in general, and Theo is not.
Perhaps we're reading into their personalities more than we should, based on public social-media appearances.
Egos tend to become exaggerated when benevolent dictator types make public statements. Their candor and bluntness on a mailing list or Twitter may be completely different than their demeanor and their kindness toward collaborators in private.
Now we have the very public drama that happened between Theo and that "other BSD" team to create the original schism. But have we had any subsequent drama that caused breakups or forks? I don't know. OpenBSD manages to plug away and push releases out the door on schedule, right?
Linus doesn't seem to have a lot of internal contributor drama, judging by the way they also push releases out the door and merge pull requests and add features.
Really, if either Theo or Linus were unreasonable men, their teams would fall apart and they would cease to be leaders of anything. I think their leadership abilities speak for themselves: they've both been committed and dedicated to the same project since decades ago, and they've both built and maintained cohesive teams of contributors who seem to mostly stick around long enough to make a difference.
They are "thought leaders", if you will; perhaps not charismatic ones, but canny businessmen who know how to nurture their pet projects.
"Running a successful open source project is just Good Will Hunting in reverse, where you start out as a respected genius and end up being a janitor who gets into fights."
> They are "thought leaders", if you will; perhaps not charismatic ones, but canny businessmen who know how to nurture their pet projects.
The problem is that for every Linus, Theo, or RMS, you have a dozen tactless buffoons who aren't a tenth as talented as any one of these individuals, are a chore to work with, and couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag. I've even seen some developers defend their lack of social skills by drawing comparisons to people like Linus and Theo.
That's why Linus shows an incredible amount of insight and maturity by purposefully and vocally trying to distance himself from that image and set a better example. He might be able to make being abrasive work, but most people can't.
Both their jobs are largely reading and writing emails on mailing lists. They are some of the few famous people where the paper trail is what counts for many intents and purposes.
