I don't think that there originaly was an argument about it eventualy being a feature. The discusion was over the choice to either release Maemo5 now with limited ASR or to wait until universal ASR was supported.

Some of the statements that were argued were made to support that early release decision and some of the arguments were from folks who either needed roadmap clarification, hadn't read the complete thread they were responding to and had taken statements out of context, or had a self serving agenda to promote.

So in that case, I agree with you, there never should have been an argument. All one had to do was wait for universal ASR to be released before purchasing if they wanted it in a Maemo device.