So, you seem to be ok with your boss shouting at you and insulting you for like half an hour because you make a one-time mistake.
I wouldn't be ok with that in a company i am working. I'd quit. Either the SVP in your example is completely incompetent and absolutely not fit to do his job (then demote him, fire hime, whatever) OR it's a misstep (then tell him his error, make certain it doesn't happen again, reason with him but don't just insult him, what good is supposed to come out of that?!).
I certainly agree that a company/team/project needs strong leaders but being strong/focused/passionate/ambitious and being a dick to people has nothing to do with each other. At all.
Agreed. Also: praise in public, chastise in private.
If I'd done something truly stupid and irresponsible at a job, I would expect to get yelled at by my boss, but in private, not in front of the whole company.
Clearly this sort of behavior seems to work for Linus, given that there's no shortage of talented kernel developers flocking to the project, but it still rubs me the wrong way.
The thing is you have to take it context. People that work with Linus know how he acts, and know how to interpret what he does. Linus's tendency to (temporarily) go ballistic very often rubs those unfamiliar with it the wrong way, but you learn after a while that he really isn't some kind of mega-aggressive jerk.
I don't like (and won't stand for) "abusive" control-freak type-A bosses, but Linus isn't one of those.
Points one knows after being on the LKML for a while and seeing a few Linus rants:
(1) He doesn't do this every day, but he does it periodically so it's Not Just You.
(2) He almost always does it For A Good Reason; it's not just because he's in a bad mood, it's really because you did something stupid. If you didn't do something stupid, and he's just confused, see points (4) and (5).
(3) Even if you think he's got the volume up too high, it's generally fairly proportionate to the stupidity of the original act (subtle confusion is less stupid than knowingly breaking huge numbers of apps), and proportionate to the "you should have known better" factor (i.e., his direct lieutenants are held to a much higher standard that Little-Joey-the-first-time-driver-author).
(4) He usually Calms Down Quickly, and gets more technical; really it's not personal. He wants to solve the problem, not argue. However ranty his initial message, it's not just an insult; it says what you did wrong and why.
(5) If you were really right, and he was wrong, he'll quickly admit his error after being presented with a good argument, and will start calling himself an idiot. He doesn't hold grudges. [Judging from the exchanges I've seen, though, he's usually not wrong; he has very, very, good instincts, and I suppose that's one reason why he so confidently goes off ranting...if he's not sure about something he'll ask a question instead.]
My gripe here isn't with Torvalds in particular. I just don't think anyone should behave that way in public toward other people. The context isn't particularly relevant. I don't care if Torvalds is a good or bad person, or is or isn't abusive. You just don't act that way in public toward other people. You just... don't.
Clearly opinions on this vary; I'm just stating mine.
This is not a minor mistake, to go with the company analogy, this is a kind of mistake that would fire you instantly if you did it. There are few worse things to do in the kernel than breaking user space. Would you prefer being fired for incompetence rather than being insulted?
If you fired every programmer that ever introduced a regression into bleeding edge pre-release code, you would not have very many programmers left. I don't think that is a realistic mode of operation.
Bugs happen, that's a fact of life. How and why they happen is what drives the reaction. For example, a bug caused by a simple typo is nothing to sweat over, whereas a bug caused by lack of attention to quality or by ignoring the established procedures will normally result in a 'talk'. LKML 'talks' just happen to be public, and everyone knows that going in.
Complaining about analogies is like complaining that the morphism between (Q, +, ✕) and (R, +, ✕) is not a good example because there's no √: Q -> Q. That's simply wrong, it's a very good example. They are both vector spaces and the morphism, the analogy, captures the essence of the similar behaviour in the context required.
The analogy was not between introducing regressions in open source vs. commercial software, it was between introducing this particular regression, in the way that it happened, and the abstract idea of doing something so severe in an arbitrary abstract company -- not software company -- any company; something so serious that it warrants immediate dismissal. Surely anyone can think of something that satisfies the above criteria in whatever field they are working without having to bound the free variables and twist the analogy in a way that it fails just to complain that it does.
I certainly agree that a company/team/project needs strong leaders but being strong/focused/passionate/ambitious and being a dick to people has nothing to do with each other. At all.