Leadership doesn't require politeness. Fairness is probably what you really want.

I think this is a good point. I don't want people to be needlessly polite, I want them to be truthful in a manner that is also respectful.

I agree, fairness over politeness. I would say honesty over politeness as well. That isn't to say you shouldn't be polite; just realize that sometimes your decisions are going to hurt people no matter how nicely you put it.

linus has charisma, which trumps politeness. people love him for his rudeness.

Linus has to his credit the fact that he's less of an a-hole than, say, Theo de Raadt.

Though I'm not so sure I want Nice Guys(tm) writing my software...

But, comparing anyone to de Raadt is easy :D

He's nicer than Jobs, at least.

Granted, Jobs was not always a nice person behind closed doors. However, at least during his Apple 2.0 days, he did NOT trash the people working for him in public the way Linus habitually does.

Another difference is that a lot of people working for Jobs (again, at least during the Apple 2.0 days) made f* you money for their efforts. There are engineers making a living working on Linux, but not on that scale, I think.

He also didn't praise people working for him in public. Or mention people working for him in public. At all. Are you sure you aren't mistaking silence for civility?

Steve Jobs regularily praised the people working for Apple, sometimes as a group, sometimes by name. Watch any Keynote to see that.

Are any of these people working for Linus? Is he paying them? Are they not free to fork off their own kernel tree if they don't like the way he maintains his?

Jobs was running a company, and paying people directly for results..... (all other judgement aside)