&gt; Abusive is when that conversation turns into name calling.<p>I don&#x27;t think so; it depends on context. If someone calls you names in context of you doing something stupid, then it&#x27;s not abuse, it&#x27;s just being abrasive. Abuse would be had he done it without you giving a reason. And I think we should save the word abuse for the latter (and also perhaps for something where is a profit motive).<p>I mean, every post from Linus where he uses harsh words has some context like that. He just doesn&#x27;t randomly throws insults to his colleagues. You can read the insults as an abuse or you can read them as a big yellow warning signs - your choice.<p>&gt; When those complaints let fly to other ears, they should be phrased a little better.<p>Here the &quot;should&quot; is a cultural choice. It&#x27;s a universal, safe option. It&#x27;s like being polite to people you don&#x27;t know, or being diplomatic in diplomacy.<p>But in the cultural context of kernel development, you&#x27;re already part of the in-group. And in that particular in-group, being called names is normal and accepted by the insiders. That it happens on the Internet, for the outsiders to see, doesn&#x27;t change the fact that the cultural choice was made <i>freely</i> by insiders.<p>And people who prefer the former to the latter (as per my previous post) probably don&#x27;t care to much about being called names when they do stupid thing (being abused, as you call it, but they actually don&#x27;t want to be really abused or tolerate it either) - because with that mentality, it&#x27;s results or your own improvement that matters, not so much who is polite. I think Linus would be OK if other people called him names when he does something stupid, however it doesn&#x27;t happen mostly because people respect him and he doesn&#x27;t do stupid things very often.