I have to wonder why so many comments have ‘X sucks, please say Y which rocks’, as an attitude. Negativity doesn't really sell me on much.

Seriously though. The poor design (& egregious misuse) of those libraries became a major concern for us at Cloudant. I wanted people to become aware of what they were doing wrong & why. I thought it would be best done with a bang. Fixing the situation beyond the patches I submitted would have required that I go on a campaign to have those libraries removed from the face of the earth (which seems more extreme than very strongly recommending people stay away from them).