Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least he edited it to something more palatable. I vastly prefer someone who can admit to making a mistake and amending what they said to someone who doubles down. The latter attitude has become far too normalised in the last few years.
Is political correctness necessary to have a thriving community / open source project? Linux seems to be doing fine. I wouldn't personally care either way but it is non-obvious to me that the first version would actually hurt the community.
> This week people in our community confronted me about my lifetime of not understanding emotions. My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for.
> Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry. The above is basically a long-winded way to get to the somewhat painful personal admission that hey, I need to change some of my behavior, and I want to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely.
> I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately.
He took time off and he’s better now. What you call “political correctness” is what I and others call “basic professionalism”. It took Linus 25 years to understand that. I can only hope that the people who hero worshipped him and adopted a similar attitude can also mature.