You're setting up a false dichotomy. There is a middle ground between behaving like an asshole and too much diplomacy. Do you really think respectful disagreement is the same as being "overly-PC"? Torvalds is a little harsh sometimes, but it's nothing compared to the disgusting rudeness of this rant.
I've never understood that "shades of gray" line. How about some color?
Edit: this seems to need clarifying. I understand what the line means. What I don't understand is why people use it so much when it repeats the error it purports to correct. In nearly every case where "reality is either 0 or 1" is wrong, "reality is some coefficient of a single variable between 0 and 1" is just as wrong. That is a poor way to champion the richness of reality. What's interesting is how it corresponds to the emotional crimpedness of a world in which everything is gray.
"black or white" is a dot. "shades of gray" is like an axis on which you can plot points.
"color" on the other hand is like a 3-dimensional space, and so points can no longer be compared and sorted. How do you compare green with blue? You cannot.
On the topic, you can compare the rudeness of two messages and you can also establish some threshold over which the rudeness is no longer acceptable. That's why people use the "shades of gray" metaphor, because it's still useful.
And indeed, life has color, but that's why life is complicated, which is why we feel the need to simplify its dynamics.
What is this, arguing for the sake of arguing? He answered your question perfectly. Adding color for "emotions" makes absolutely no sense in this context.
The metaphor isn't broken. What you propose is broken.
The word "gradient" isn't even part of the metaphor, so I don't see how that would cause confusion. What comes between black and white? Gray. Not millions of color hues. Shades of gray makes sense and fighting to try and get colors in the mix somewhere is only serving to muddy this up.
Edit: Actually, here's another perspective: millions of color hues come between black and white only if you're thinking about colors to begin with. (Black and white aren't strictly considered colors even.) So while I can see where you're getting this from, I still think it doesn't serve anyone well to try and spice it up from the very well understood meaning of the phrase.
To be fair, the rant was written in 2002. While namespaces existed as a W3C REC as of 1999, I don't recall them being used much in practice until significantly later than that (as is usual for anything going from committee spec to the real world). Had he written it later, he may very well have ripped on namespaces.
