yes. It comes down to what one person or faction feel is a bug and what others do not. These opinions hampered by the limits to that one individual or groups values and life experience, attempting to speak for millions of others.
The real bug is in how we arrive at the definition of what a bug is, in the first place.
On a private project, a team lead decides.
On a public project, it becomes political.
There is a third option, market choice.
People who subscribe to Luke's worldview and vision for Bitcoin can download and run Knots.
Another way to let the market decide is to reduce the scope and importance of core, and move features to a layer 2, where consumers choose.
Some bugs and upgrades are not political of course. Things such as a flaw in SHA that requires emergency fork. Other bugs are maintenance or efficiency types, as languages and procedures backing the project improve. These can keep being pushed to core, but the surface area can be further reduced, along with ossification.
The history of projects shows that when political and technical become confused, the project will eventually alienate so many people, despite the best of intentions and logic, it dies.
