My choice of wording is from my assumption that nobody, at any point, actually wanted that behaviour. And I stand by that being a pretty safe bet.

So I wouldn't refer to it as "the design". It's not that the methods are unsound, it's that I don't see any method at all.

As for not wanting to break existing scripts, OpenBSD is not even remotely as concerned about backwards compatibility as Linux is. I don't mean that in a derogatory way. It's a perfectly cromulent choice.