In my dozen or so years of experience with Theo, we've disagreed and
argued many times and he's always been reasonable. For the record, if I
had bothered to keep track of our debates, he's ended up being "right"
far more often than I have. Yep, I've been wrong, quite often, and he's
been kind enough to drop-kick me in a better direction. He's a friend
and I've learned a lot from him over the years.
Your misconception comes from people showing up on the OpenBSD mailing
lists with a prideful hostile attitude intending to prove how much they
know, when in fact, they haven't done their homework correctly or
completely. Things often go sideways in a hurry if people aren't willing
to look at their own opinions critically and do the additional work to
see the other sides. Of course, if you walk into someone else's home and
shit on their couch, you get what you deserve.
There are edgy debates between developers, particularly in code reviews
and proposed patches, but the reason for them is simple; everyone wants
to get to the "best" and "most correct" answer. In other words the goal
is the same, but the opinions vary.
Being friends with the person/people on the other side of a pointed
debate is important, particularly across (human) language barriers. Jake
Meuser recently wrote about this on undeadly.org and I can't express it
any better than he has:
Your misconception comes from people showing up on the OpenBSD mailing lists with a prideful hostile attitude intending to prove how much they know, when in fact, they haven't done their homework correctly or completely.
I can believe this happens, but De Raadt wasn't asked to resign from the NetBSD core team by new users who hadn't done their homework correctly or completely; it was a consensus decision of some of the world's most experienced BSD developers who had worked with him extensively. (Of course, it's possible some/much of the fault lies with them.)
You do have a point, and upvoted for refusing to cast fault one way or the other. Though in the late 90's I read the archives about the split after the fact, I wasn't involved when it happened.
I think not always getting agreeing, not having perfectly aligned goals with others, and not always communicating well is just part of being human. But going our separate ways and doing our own thing can open up opportunities for changes (good and/or bad).
I don't see why this upsets people so much. OpenBSD is his project; he gets to decide, rational or not.
Yes, working together as a happy family in the land of rainbows and candy canes is a nice ideal. But the reality is that not a lot of code is written by unicorns :)
That is what you experience when you agree with him. Try to disagree and argue with him someday.