And the rules demonstrably create situations where it's easy to introduce bugs or hard to fix them, because they prioritise stability and a consistent set of package versions over the version that the upstream developer has tested. Followed blindly (and without putting in the effort to test to the same level of rigor as upstream), this causes problems, and it's right to point those out. Debian's ways would involve the package maintainer putting in a lot more effort to marry their rules with a package that actually worked, and they were not up for that.

(Debian's rules aren't worthless, it's part of how they can make something that's pretty suitable for 'boring infrastructure' systems because they can keep a system with a known and stable set of behavior up to date with critical security fixes for a long time, but boy do they result in some dumb situations sometimes)