Linus told a story about a guy, that wrote something for the kernel and Linus thought in the first place that it was more or less bullshit, but didn't told it directly to the guy, so when the guy was finished and wanted to get his stuff merged, Linus had to tell him that he will never merge this.

I don't know how mucher later, but this guy killed himself afterwards. Linus told that he doesn't feel guilty about this or thinks that he was the main cause for the killing, but well, I don't think that such an experience has no effect on your behaviour, but I can't tell if Linus' behaviour was different before this event.

I think that Linus told this story in the talk where he showed nvidia the finger.