I don’t doubt that people on all sides have made mis-steps, but from the outside it mostly just seems like Kent doesn’t want to play by the rules (despite having been given years of patience).
Kent seems very patient in explaining his position (and frustrations arising from other people introducing bugs to his code) and the kernel & debian folks are performing a smearing campaign instead of replying to what I see are genuine problems in the process. As an example, the quotes that are referenced by user paravoid are, imho, taken out of context (judging by reading the provided links).
There probably is a lot more history to it, but judging from that thread it's not Kent who looks like a bad guy.
However, sometimes, a certain detachment can help when looking at what is, in the end, a "cultural disagreement" more suited to an elementary school's playground.
Whenever I see open source spats like this, and then see a Dev harangued and chased from forum to forum by what looks like a coordinated group ("groupies"?), all accusing him/her of rude behaviour, while they keep making attacks on his/her personality, character or temperament...
it leads me to think rather poorly of this "wild west posse".
Anyway, bottom line, Kent is writing open source software to benefit others (and people didn't have qualms about taking his previous bcache & using it to build out storage solutions to make millions), so perhaps he doesn't quite deserve all the abuse and ganging up, no matter whose feathers he ruffled, and how.