Insults in general are perceived, rightly or wrongly, as something that speeds socialization. It's the "football coach" approach to managing new talent, a calculated gamble that the stick is more effective than the carrot and that little of value is lost when someone is pushed away from a community when they're socialized harshly.

It'll be interesting to see whether kinder, gentler open source communities start obviously outproducing ones operating on the Torvalds/Drepper model.