(Please correct me if I misunderstand the problem, it'e been years since I worked on this stuff)
It seems to be both guys are right. That is, in an ideal world starting with a black sheet of paper then it seems to me Kay is almost certainly correct.
But, this does not mean Torvalds is wrong - breaking legacy systems because of a code change that interprets existing config files is "a bad thing".
So, we fall (ONCE AGAIN) into the trap of living with cruft to support legacy stuff. Just like we have to live with NTSC and pulse dial phones - anybody in Canada with a Bell land-line bill will recognize this charge, every month to "support touch tone":
http://www.keebler.net/blog/20...
Never mind 99.99999999999% of phones in Canada are touch tone or that this has been there since the 1960s - how many infrastructural changes require a 70 year amortization period and never mind the telco switches have to go out of their way to support pulse (rotary) dial since touch tone in the international norm for landline and cell phones yet we have to pay extra so support the current practice everyone uses? Huh?
That's what supporting legacy cruft buys you.
So, while I see both guys as being right, I also see both guys as being wrong: I don't think Kay should have made this change quietly and I don't think Torvalds should have fired his sorry ass.
If it were me, I'd have done this.
1) Change the spec so "debug" isn't allowed any more. Use Kay's new and improved syntax.
2) Rather than make "debug" does what it does now, or just stop working, have it instead spit out a message that says: "debug" has changed. Don't use it here any more it probably doesn't do what you think. If you know what you're doing and want to proceed anyway, use "debug.legacy" instead and it will give you so much stuff it'll probably hang your system and good luck, see for the new syntax or how to use it properly, and further explanation.
But that's just me.
As always communication might have helped and Kay and Torvalds should have spoken, back-channel, to find a way to elegantly resolve this instead of the usual public dick-waving that does no good and just makes everyone look arrogant and childish. FOSS is full of people with bizarre personalities, but we gotta do better, they're bizarre, not retarded.