No, he's not. He is a little arrogant - it's hard to be such a significant tech lead without being so - but if you actually read what he writes, he's not actually that abrasive.
What happens is that some sensationalist idiot will see Torvalds lose his patience and post an angry retort to someone, and post just that response to places like HN, completely out of context. I've lost count of the number of times it's happened here, when everyone's tutting about Torvalds' behaviour and how he's "so aggressive right out of the gate", when no-one looks at the thread history to see him being patient and explaining things.
In any case, zero of the tech heads from Jobs on down satisfy your demands to be taken seriously. I really don't understand why Torvalds gets held to this higher standard of hippie-level friendliness when people don't expect the same from other major tech project managers. I mean hell, Jobs was adored for having opinions that people considered ridiculous.
What happens is that some sensationalist idiot will see Torvalds lose his patience and post an angry retort to someone, and post just that response to places like HN, completely out of context. I've lost count of the number of times it's happened here, when everyone's tutting about Torvalds' behaviour and how he's "so aggressive right out of the gate", when no-one looks at the thread history to see him being patient and explaining things.
In any case, zero of the tech heads from Jobs on down satisfy your demands to be taken seriously. I really don't understand why Torvalds gets held to this higher standard of hippie-level friendliness when people don't expect the same from other major tech project managers. I mean hell, Jobs was adored for having opinions that people considered ridiculous.