> he answers questions from newbies and enhancement requests are far more polite and charitable. His ire seems to be reserved for fellow programmers.
Some programmers (like myself) have little patience for people they consider should know better and are wasting their time. These same programmers are far more charitable to newbies because they know newbies are still learning.
> Remember that this is the guy who said he would personally maintain python 2 because he didn't want to rewrite calibre for python 3 [0].
I read his "I am perfectly capable of maintaining python 2 myself." as "I am perfectly capable of maintaining [calibre running on] python2 myself", which is completely different.
I'm sure some people might also find his answer quite terse and dismissive ("No, it doesn't."), but I read it as a simple statement of facts, using the same tone as the original bug report, which itself is quite terse and imperative "Python 2 is retiring in thirty months. Calibre needs to convert to Python 3."