> It's a survival mechanism. Not everyone has the time or ability to be nice to everyone they have to deal with in a position like Torvalds'.

Flaming someone on a mailing list takes as much time as being nice to them. If it was about time then Linus could just ignore or dismiss things without going out of his way to type up insults.

> Flaming someone on a mailing list takes as much time as being nice to them.

Not if you take into account the time saved by (strongly) discouraging people from wasting your time in the future.

> If it was about time then Linus could just ignore or dismiss things

No, you absolutely cannot do that. If you ignore people on software projects, they do not go away. They just get more convinced that they're right, which means getting more shrill and insistent.