Update: See Linus Torvalds's response to this Ars report here.

On Friday in New Zealand—meaning Thursday in the United States, because, well, time zones—Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds ended a keynote presentation at a New Zealand open source conference by offering flip responses to questions about diversity, future projects, and his gruff attitude toward Linux developers.

Following his keynote speech at the Linux.conf.au Conference in Auckland, New Zealand, Torvalds opened a Q&A session by fielding a question from Nebula One developer Matthew Garrett that accused Torvalds of having an abrasive tone in the Linux kernel mailing list. "Some people think I'm nice and are shocked when they find out different," Torvalds said in response (quoted via multiple Twitter accounts of the event). "I'm not a nice person, and I don't care about you. I care about the technology and the kernel—that's what's important to me."

Afterward, another question from the audience asked for Torvalds' thoughts on diversity in the open source community, an issue emphasized by the lack of minority keynote speakers at the Auckland event (and only one female keynote speaker, to boot). Torvalds offered a the-work-is-what-matters sort of response, stating, according to Twitter accounts, that "the most important part of open source is that people are allowed to do what they are good at" and "all that [diversity] stuff is just details and not really important."

That response stood in stark contrast to recent statements and initiatives from companies like Intel about the underlying problems with diversity in tech hiring—both in terms of how more diverse candidates need to be considered for current jobs, and how tech leaders should invest in encouraging future STEM interest and study. (Other diversity reports from Google, Facebook, and others have echoed those sentiments.) Torvalds' response also stood in contrast to the Linux Foundation's own efforts to bolster participation by women and minorities in open source development.

The crowd's less politically volatile questions received joking responses, particularly one about future projects he might ever work on. "I am a lazy person, which is why I like open source, for other people to do work for me," Torvalds said in response. "I like to sit on the beach with a floofy drink and let you guys do all the work... I’m coasting, right now I’m coasting—I don’t have any projects I’m working on."