While I am glad this happened, I am surprised. I truly would not have expected Linus to ever write something like this. I am curious how this can happen so suddenly. Have people not tried to convince him that he can be critical without being insulting many times before? What was different this time?
Maybe he realized that his behavior would be against the new CoC.
Maybe he had a good conversation with people he respects, where they confronted him with his behavior, and he was finally able to view his behavior through the lens of an outsider.
Maybe he finally found and realized the "bugs" in his social interaction code and needs some time of to improve his mental tools.
He's tired. He's older. He mentioned several times how he's been developing this for decades. Maybe he is making a balance, maybe he thinks that the Kernel does not really need him so badly now, and he can take a time out.
It depends on how stable is the Kernel, the rate of external changes (e.g. new processors), new discovered vulns, and the capacity of the new leader.
If all of those things go in the wrong direction, Linux could lose its reputation. For example, imagine a new vuln discovered and Linux failing to fix it for more than a year, or imagine Linux becoming slower than other alternatives in new processors
