So is there an agreement that the choice is between 'professionalism' and, let's call it lack of anger management? Sounds like a false dichotomy to me.
I completely on board with Linus that 'professionalism' today does, in fact, imply many things that are bad for your karma, including office politics, hypocrisy and so on. But at the same time it also implies a couple things which are actually good. In particular, being able to give feedback to other people in such a way that they are not being offended by the form is one of them. Sure, you can always say that people should always welcome feedback in whatever form it takes, but reality is, humans are imperfect and their egos are fragile. If you have talented, motivated people who are adding value to your project, pissing them off without a good reason will simply mean your project wouldn't be as good. The cost of getting some anger management skills in place seems to be a very affordable one to pay, aside from it having an intrinsic value of being a nicer person (which some people may disagree with me on).
And as for the "he's so brilliant and kernel group kicks so much ass they don't really need people with fragile egos in there" argument, I'd draw an analogy with business. Even if you're making great money, AND you still leaving money on the table somewhere, you can improve and should improve. The culture of never stopping to improve begets great things. In the same fashion, if your manners mean someone who could have contributed to your project, did not, it means you did your project a disservice.