Linus' mail from yesterday that the article links to started with a very good explanation of what Linus was thinking:

This is very recognizable. You sit back and you hope your colleagues recover on their own from mistakes - and you may nudge them in private to resolve it. Occasionally, people will have gaslit themselves into misconceptions beyond repair and apply (=abuse) their power in hurtful ways. This happens often in open-source and it's most often happening with productive (and ambitious) colleagues.

Calling that out is hard because you don't want to go there; you don't want to fight fire with fire and take a position of authority. But, sometimes you have to and I think it's good that Linus did it. It will never be the same for Hellwig again though. There's a good chance he'll pass the torch now because these kinds of messages are never nice to receive.

My bottom line: it sucks that it was needed.