In defense of being blunt and to the point   

This is partly in response to Josh's blog entry Calling Bullsh*t in Open Source communities and Sarah Sharp's plea for No more verbal abuse. I think Linus Torvalds is being treated unfairly and is being abused for his frank, no bullsh*t, flowery quiky style of stating it. Many have accepted the axiom that Linus is a jerk, childish and needs to conform to the professional standard simply because we are too lazy to analyze the facts for ourselves and like many public figures Linus likes to give people a good show.

Quotes from Linus

She simply doesn't agree with Linus brand of Tough love which is a brand that I share -- perhaps because I'm in the same age group as Linus.

So my plea is, please let us not get into the business of training people on the ART OF NICENESS and SENSITIVITY and studying the loop holes so that we can use that as a weapon to stab each other behind closed doors and private emails where NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU CRYING FOR HELP.

I think I am more qualified than most to judge verbal abuse and oppression when I see it. I'm the daughter of a black Nigerian man and a white American mother. I was born in Nigeria and spent my youth there. I've been traumatized all my life both verbally and physically from all sides for being different in all kinds of ways. This trauma is most often inflicted by women who've told me to be quiet because I do not have the social skills to grasp what is happening. My lesson learned is your oppressor may be someone that looks just like you (or thinks he/she understands what you are feeling) and your ally just MAY BE a purple dragon living in a cave wearing a bathrobe.