> His point was that the mere ability was the issue

Can you elaborate?

> so they're going against their original values because they know what they wanted isn't what the broader community wants.

No, they are still sticking to everything, but added support for the existing ecosystem. Yes they are adding this to combat the network effect that node has, but it doesn't really go against anything. You simply prefix npm in front of npm imports. Now you could use a package.json file if you already have one, but you don't have to.