I view it as a trade-off for excellent man pages. Rather than waste time figuring out what the appropriate amoutn of and commands to list in the short help lis

I view it as a trade-off for excellent man pages. Rather than waste time figuring out what the appropriate amoutn of and commands to list in the short help list (especially for commands that might have a lot of and/or complex options), they have very simple rules. List switched with help, list everything and very clearly in the man page. Since I believe they don't accept code patches without relevant man page patches that explain them if they alter the behavior or add/modify an option, this seems like a sane way to avoid bikeshedding on what is essentially superfluous information, since the "appropriate" amount of info to include is ambiguous.