@tesiccl I never said they give you a huge disadvantage. But you can't deny that they do make a noticible difference. Try sailing on a brig for a while with both types of sails. You will be shocked at the difference, even when you're not in combat. In fact, I feel like they are more of a hinderance in normal gameplay than they are in combat, since you don't usually have your sails all the way down during PVP encounters. And if you don't think they offer any kind of leg up, then why does such a huge percentage of players use these? Just because they're expensive? I highly doubt that. They don't even look that cool IMO.
Just look at this image from Lormiun in that thread you linked to. This seems like a pretty obvious advantage to me. With normal sails, you can't see a single thing in front of you. Disregarding the existance of the DA sails, this just seems like a bad design to me.
All I'm trying to do here is offer a simple solution that helps everyone.