So it takes strength and conviction to be rude and condescending? I'd say it takes strength to remain polite in a heated argument. I'm not impressed with Torvalds' attitude.
I think nobody takes Linus's insults at face value anymore. I'd actually laugh my ass off if I was a kernel developer and got told off by Linus.
People see Torvalds doing it, they see de Raadt doing it, they see a bunch of people doing it, and so they think it's okay to do it in their email list.
This increases developer churn and burnout, and that's not something that OpenSource can afford.
I think it's a shame if young people are learning how to collaborate with others from these broken models, rather than learning effective skills. Especially if inter-personal skills are more likely to be weak in the dev community.
Having said all that, I kind of agree that it's okay for someone to be an arse on their own pet project. If it becomes unbearable people could just fork it split and the project.