Let's not overgeneralize. *This time* he didn't name names. On the other hand, he still did make some pretty strong inferences about "whoever" wrote the code, and "whoever" isn't hard to discover. That's well beyond just criticizing the code.
On the other other hand, I've been on too many projects that *didn't* lay down the law this firmly. Developers are a sneaky lot, and they tend to have their own agendas. They'll keep sneaking in code that they know is crap, if it lets them mark more of their personal tasks complete. If nobody is watching, or nobody responds strongly enough to put the fear of God into them, the result is a codebase that slowly rots into irrelevance. I do think Linus and (even more so) certain other Linux kernel developers behave in some pretty toxic ways sometimes, but as we try to improve that situation we still need to remember that bringing the hammer down once in a while is strictly necessary to maintain any kind of quality. It's all in how it's done, not whether it should be done at all.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
