The discussion in question is purely about virtual filesystems like /proc and /sys, where inodes don't really exist or matter (you already can't just tar up those filesystems, so unique inodes don't matter). The reason Linus got hot is that the same person keeps making broken code submissions to "fix" something that is not a problem (and instead making more problems in the process), and has so far apparently mostly ignored the more gentle approach.
On the other hand, someone else has been working on another virtual FS, and he and Linus (and Al Viro, the lead VFS dev) have had a long back and forth and productive discussion about issues and how to fix them.
If you do your homework on how to integrate with the existing systems, can describe what you are doing, and take productive feedback, Linus and most of the other kernel developers are just fine to work with. This is not "news", this is somebody looking to MAKE news of "see Linus is a bad person!" because someone else repeatedly poked him until he got mad.