A missed point

Linus' argument isn't about being secure/insecure by selectively backporting patches per se (it's not a boolean property) but whether one's more or less secure/insecure by doing selective backporting or just flowing with his git HEAD. by covering up security fixes he effectively makes that choice for everyone, and that doesn't fly well with people who believe they know better (by virtue of not providing kernels based on his git HEAD to their users, which i believe covers about 99.99999% of all linux users).