It saves time when you don't have to carefully structure each criticism in a compliment sandwich and so forth. It's understood in this environment that that's how the story goes - the excerpts people see of 'linus being rude again' are tut-tutted by a bunch of people who've never read a single other message on the kernel mailing list.
I can only imagine only the most socially incompetent people would actually find it a major time-sink to say things civilly. You don't have to make a compliment sandwich, saying "Your kernel patch throws a bunch of warnings, what the fuck is this?" is hell of a lot better than "which one of you retards can't read the guidelines?"
The basis of civility is to avoid personal attacks when it's not about the person. This isn't about the person. You can be civil and still be pissed off.
I was using the 'compliment sandwich' as a shorthand for reviewing all the commentary to make sure it's pleasant or polite. That stuff does take effort and time, particularly if you aren't intimately familiar with the other party and have to generalise it to the generic person. I've done a hell of a lot of support in my time and this is abundantly clear to me. There are even people who perform better when you swear around them, because they don't feel like they have to control their language.
Couched phrasing takes effort - and Torvalds is one of the few technocrats who still gets his hands dirty in the trenches.
The closest friend I'm with the more I swear. What I don't get is people awkwardly swearing in presence of people they just met. I see it as attempt to desperately get connection to other people.
Why are you apologizing?
The only reason being polite saves time is because someone is unpracticed at it.
This comment (and indeed your comment) are both polite and completely disagree. I spent a while thinking of how best to express my point, but none at all working out how to avoid being offensive.
But if it makes you feel better: fuck compliment sandwiches ;)