In almost instances of Linus going off on one in public it is because maintainers weren’t doing their jobs (to act as quality gatekeepers), or particular developers thinking they could steam roll road changes through if they kept submitting them, or not listening to what Linus was saying. I remember Linus used to ream out Hans Reiser a lot (the guy who was subsequently imprisoned for murdering his wife) because he constantly tried to get ReiserFS into the kernel despite serious issues Linus had with it.
So generally when you see a rant, there is a history behind it and the rant itself is directed with a point. I also think it’s self evident that the kernel has benefited from this “benevolent dictator” model. I’m sure some people have gotten all precious over their feelings being hurt. The rest raised their game and the result has been a code quality standard you’ll probably never see anywhere else.