Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

I don't find that assertion convincing.

I guess what would be called abusive by many was merely a "stern talking-to" to Linus.

Which is why he needs therapy.

It would be great if we would hold ourselves to higher standard of professionalism and stop apologizing for toxic behavior in software engineering. I've never seen another industry where abusive infighting is considered acceptable and necessary for success. It's almost worn as a badge of honor by people who -- more often than not -- aren't even that good.

In the current political climate, the left and the right have been divided by the public consciousness into the following dichotomy:

The left is overly sensitive and looks for things to be offended by.

The right is concerned with maturity and personal responsibility and anti-political correctness, where those things are defined primarily in contrast to the left's perceived over-sensitivity.

Simultaneously, there have been a lot of trends in various communities (software and otherwise) to formalize rules of conduct and push out people who are more naturally aggressive in tone.

Through that lens, this behavior has been seen as "left-leaning." So in contrast, the right-leaning behavior would be letting everyone behave as they want with the "free market of ideas" being the primary driving force for change rather than any set of enforced community standard. (You can see the parallel with the typically "conservative" economic perspective.)

I hope you can see the general trend.

So what the grandparent is saying is that it's not REALLY about left vs. right, without explicitly contradicting the beliefs of the common social consciousness.

Edit: The comment above that says, "Different people have very different beliefs what is to be considered 'heated', 'hateful' and 'treating well' or not" would be considered "right-leaning" through the common lens because it's implicitly positing that there shouldn't be a common set of community standards (with the implicit supposition that you CAN'T set a common set of community standards because there will always be people who disagree). Not picking on anyone, just using an available example.

But equally important is everyone on the other side working to avoid being consumed by emotion, and learn to control their emotions better, when people and things in the world end up being mean or distressing.

This doesn't happen so much with Linus anymore because everyone knows about him and the people most likely to go on tilt when Linus goes on tilt have adapted and avoid communicating with him. That would be a universal solution if you could get a list of all the potentially harsh communicators out there, but doesn't work at all when you don't have such a list, and anyway it would severely constrain your interactions with the world because a fairly large number of people are like that.

People will gain a lot more from, in addition to calmly pointing out how the hostility they're encountering is unwarranted, learning to self-reflect and switch mental states to avoid getting into self-destructive patterns of thought just because someone else or something else is being harsh or mean.

Various kinds of meditation-like practice seem to be a good way to pursue improvement for people on both sides of the problem.

It's not any easier for Linus to always be nice than it is for someone who takes personally one of his outbursts to not take it personally.

Because these actually improve the project.