Direct language, without verbal abuse:
"I am upset and angry that you keep making the same mistakes."
That's clearly communicating how he feels, without verbally abusing his audience.
No, remember the context: you've already used nice, direct words, and Kai has ignored them multiple times. Now you need to shake Kai's cage. Linus might have gone overboard, but his technique has more chance of success than yours.
Also, this is not a sterile corporate environment. The LKML is more like a dive bar than Applebee's and that's the way they like it.
What I want to firmly point out is the general community's level of acceptance of verbally abusive language.
There could be a debate about what constitutes verbal abuse, on a case by case basis. And that would turn into a mess.
What I'd love to see is the community acknowledge that using and even encouraging such language is bad for everybody, and it's bad for the open source movement, big time.
My interpretation of that email chain reads: anyone who is stupid enough to continue reading byte-by-byte after being told that it's a bad idea should be retroactively aborted.
The implied subject makes a big difference. (I still think it's over the line but I understand that everyone makes mistakes in the heat of the moment)
Given that direct words were ignored multiple times, I would suggest that the next action is simply to not merge, without comment, after a final "You are ignoring us, we can't the time to keep correcting you. Your bad merges will be ignored without comment."
Such a path will get a developer's attention, and it involves no verbal abuse.
A problem with flinging abusive words around is that it artificially and needlessly limits the diversity of your community. Though, it might be that that's t he intent:
"The LKML is more like a dive bar than Applebee's and that's the way they like it."
