My saying:
People who don't swear scare the c**p out of me.
Now, there's a time and a place, but we all do it.
At least half of those comments (and that's all you could find over, what, nearly 20 years of mailing lists?) are obviously in jest. The others he's deadly serious. It's s*** code and people aren't even testing and then pushing to him for the stable branches? He's correct there.
But, you know what, he doesn't need to be nice. I'm not nice. My boss isn't nice if something that shouldn't have happened ends up on his desk. Why should you be?
I work in an exclusive private school. Obviously, in front of the kids, nothing gets sworn. But in the staffroom, in meetings, even among staff when the kids aren't around... hell of a lot of swearing. It's normal and human. It's not even sexist - the women do it as much as the men. It's not ageist - the old ladies in the office join in with the new recruits. Everybody swears.
Now add: absolutely no "management" to answer to. Now add that people take your opinion as gospel because you're a skilled engineer who was placed on the pedestal by others. Now add that you're not in a corporate setting (hence, no fecking lawyers), don't care about the corporate setting, have escaped the corporate setting. And, like hell would I be any politer than Linus in these instances.
Honestly, I meet people all the time who are infinitely more obnoxious, infinitely more poisonous, infinitely more disruptive, infinitely more dishonest and - like lawyers - they all "speak nicely" of everyone in public. Of course they do. That's how they work. It doesn't mean they're any better than the guy that just calls you "moronic" when you're being a moron. In fact, it's usually the opposite.
Some of the worst people I've ever dealt with in my life, I've never heard swear and they'd probably have you before some HR panel if you did it to them.
Some of the best people I've ever dealt with in my life regularly refer to themselves, myself and other colleagues are four-letter-words of the worst kind.
There's a correlation there. It's about speaking your mind.