Motif was kind of a running joke back in the early 90s (check the Usenet archive for posts and jokes), just like how JavaScript is today - Everyone was using it, it was in a state of continued development (with a feature creeping tendency), and like other technologies, it has its own limitations. Unsurprisingly, it received a huge number of complaints, its popularity was partially responsible for that. Just like how early Unix had a reputation of unreliability, or how many people complain about JavaScript or web frameworks today. Are they technical milestones? Yes. Is it normal for people to complain about it? Also yes.