Some of Linus's past messages came across as needlessly aggressive and insulting. There really was no practical reason for that and just served to alienate contributors, and it came across as unprofessional.

You can be a strong, opinionated leader and still be kind (or at least neutral) to the people you're working with.

A good leader is someone who can deliver hard messages while still keeping your team inspired. It doesn't do any good if the people working under you feel like trash.

It's the difference between telling a contributor "you're an f**ing idiot" vs "this code isn't up to standards, try again". Same message, but completely different impact on your team.