Antoine addressed this at btc++. Not sure if it was recorded but I’ll try to dig it up.
My recollection of what he said:
He had a discussion with one of the jpegoors at a recent conference, was shocked at the extent to which the protocol was being abused to store data in the utxo set and came to the conclusion that a) core and spammers need more open communication lines and b) removing the limit was a concrete step that could be taken now.