@Filippo
That was written with all the confidence of someone who has never been involved from the ground up of a successful, large, volunteer project.
Emotions always come into play. The biggest piece of bullshit anyone ever dishes is that you solve all problems by focusing on only the technical. Human beings don't work that way. The question to the manager is always: Is it worth my effort to deal with their ego at the same time I deal with the technical issue.
It's never fun being on the receiving end of the vulgar and emotional attack. I know I've been there and the accusation was a hell of a lot worse than anything Torvalds ever wrote to any of his devs. The title of the email, sent to the entire group on the mail list was:
YOU FUCKING THIEVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It went on to accuse the board of directors of colluding to give improper compensation to the friend of the current President of the organization. At the time I was treasurer and the one who was actually driving the decision. The person making the accusation was one of the founders of the group. He was heavily emotionally invested in the success of the group because of the long hours he labored in promoting it. We resolved the issue by forwarding the issue to the lawyer who proceeded to explain the seriousness of the email to the sender. Because of the long distance and indirect communications it required the better part of a month to resolve. Eventually the sender recognized the valid reasons for the decision, withdrew the accusation, and apologized for his emotional outburst. There were complex reasons for the outburst. First up was an underlying animosity between the sender of the message and the person who was being contracted to do work for the NPO. Second up was that the sender considered himself to do the work and said he would have done it for free. Next up was that the sender felt shut out of the decision making process. The key to the resolution wasn't actually focusing on the technical issues. Those were down pretty cold: the person contracted had already written a similar program for a larger organization than we were and was actually being paid a pittance for the work. The pittance was more of a chain for the NPO to ensure it was done on time (always the biggest problem in an NPO). But what actually resolved the issue was showing him that we were taking his concerns seriously, even to the point of having the lawyer handle a fair part of the discussions and openly discussing the issues at meetings. Healing the emotions was as important to the resolution as addressing the technical issue.
While I wouldn't say the two individuals are good friends these days, they are civil to each other, and from time to time invite the other to social events.
Bottom line: programs are mostly written by geeks who for the most part are better at talking to machines than they are to each other. Recognize and accept that and you can deal with it better.