I don't know if there's any public statement about this. I base my position on experience at Unicode Conference and work on CLDR and ICU. I understand that it diminishes the value of my claim.

I can also point out to ICU MessageFormat - which has been designed much after Gettext and, I'd dare to say on purpose, bares no resemblance to it.

I agree that CLDR plural forms and ICU MessageFormat are somehow an implicit critic of gettext design :-)

Hahaha, thank you! I still feel ashamed of making a strong claim based on informal conversations, but I feel a bit vindicated by your agreement! :)