I suspect he did more than that, but that's a very damn interesting part. What's the "help" command there for, if everything's so secret and nobody's allowed to interoperate?
Linus isn't pissed because Tridge reversed the thing, Linus is pissed because Larry's monopoly on BK protocol is crashing down. That's what this is about. Larry doesn't want anyone to use free client, when they could just pay for a license to get the work done. Larry wants a vendor lock-in, to cash people, and he well knows he can only achieve this by force.
This is a generic intellectual property problem. Larry thinks BitKeeper is his, and everyone who interoperates with it has to pay. Imagine this in context of instant messaging networks and it'll begin having more concrete feel to it.
Control of money and other things of value always cause such difficult problems.