Well, that's just an excuse for bad leadership.

You can’t be a leader to people who have no desire to follow you in the first place. And you can’t force anyone to accept you as a leader.

The world is not as black and white as you make it out to be. Sometimes you need to throw your weight around for the overall good of the community. It’s why law enforcement exists within every functional community - there will be people who intentionally ignore “leadership” and break rules for their own selfish purposes regardless of how good said leadership is, and the only thing that will make them behave is the threat of social censure or outright punishment.

And Linus has no ability to directly correct or punish, so social censure is the next best functional tool.