At the very least, it would be far more of a circus, as the follow-up articles would read "LINUX KERNEL CREATOR LINUS TORVALDS MAKES DEVESTATING REPLY TO FOSS DRAMA!"
But yeah, I think shit like that would just make devs want to go work for a company, because at least when they make a shitty closed sourced, exploitive program people are mad at the company, not them, specifically. They don't have to deal with this shit.
This is such a conflicting story.
On one hand, this is how it should be: incentivizing safe behavior.
On the other hand, this is absolutely for publicity and secularly abusing children to try and repair the irreparable damage they've done to their own image.
Remember: if the law isn't on your side, neither are the cops.