a good case can be made that use of C++ is a SOX violation

So Linus was right? But for a second reason too:

C++ is a horrible language. It’s made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it’s much, much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do _nothing_ but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C.

That is, accepting C++ code from programmers who use C++ could be a SOX violation ;-)