I don't know the whole story, but from what I understand, Linus Torvalds is a bit of an asshole (an understatement) when it comes to his management style. When he disagrees with one of his core developers over something, he tends to go for the jugular and try to demoralize and shame them for being stupid. Actually not much unlike Steve Jobs was.

My assessment is that that men on the dev team had to develop really thick skin in order to even deal with him, and that most women devs that tried couldn't deal with his shit....they just couldn't hack it. A few left in tears.

Note that I'm not defending Linus' behavior or the work environment; it is what it is.