From what I’ve seen: Linus didn’t ever typically rip into first time contributors, it was usually always the people that he either expected better of or people that just kept submitting crap after crap.
Still sucks to be on the receiving end of it though.
On KBin I believe that it is (or at least was a bug that became a feature). There have been posts about it strongly urging Ernest not to change it and he’s said he’ll open it up to discussion before making major changes to it, if my recollection is accurate.