> This entire article is based on an assumption that this is somehow so obviously bad that there doesn't even need to be an explanation or defense of any kind of that idea.

I'm not reading it like that. The tone is just one of surprise, since this isn't something that one typically sees. Since it's obscure, it leads one to wonder if it can be bad, and I don't see how it could be.

I think it survived in the independent Linux because it's the simple and obvious way to do things, and it doesn't lead to any exceptional power of misuse one didn't already have with writing the rest of the file.