The main problem with brilliant jerks such as Linux Torvalds is that they are not composable.
Put one of them in a room with a polite person, and they will quickly exhaust that person until she leaves.
Put two of them in a room, and hell breaks loose as they start yelling at each other over the most trivial matters.
Ultimately, having a brilliant jerk around greatly limits your ability to assemble significant amounts of manpower, which is the name of the game in software.
Complaining, whether politely or impolitely, is ultimately a very ineffective way of moving things forward in a software community. If you really want something done, the most effective way is almost always to go and do it yourself.
Time is too precious a resource to expend sizeable amounts of it in Internet arguments.