It’s a very public email list and whenever Linus has one of these comments, they get widely shared.

Google the name of the receiving engineer. Despite the fact that he was involved in the creation of RISC-V, nearly all of the top results have the name “garbage” in them. I’d be mortified if that happened to my professional reputation. It would mentally destroy me. I don’t have the thick skin to deal with the ridicule of thousands.

For that reason alone I would never ever consider participating in Linux kernel development, and I’d advise others the same.

It is easy to critique others works without turning it into a spectator sport. Other people manage to do it all the time.

As for the “sweetie” part of your comment: there’s a world out there is that more than just black and white. You should try it sometime.