Depraved indifference (we don't care how much this will annoy users) rather than bad faith. Given the lack of maintenance burden and the amount of stuff that would break in $bignum scripts, the idea that removing it was seriously even considered speaks volumes.

I'm not sure what "volumes" you're talking about. Those scripts already risk being broken and causing maintenance burden by depending on the non-standard behavior in the first place. If you actually had this specified in your dependencies then it would be easy to spot the necessary change and fix it.

Nonsense. The proposed change is indefensible.

If you want to have intellectually stimulating conversations then please avoid using hyperbole, that's not a way to have a discussion. You can just mention your reasons for disagreeing instead of claiming that a differing view is indefensible.

I said nothing about bad faith, nor did I imply it.

That which(1) is not portable is utter nonsense.

Actually you may want to take a step back and read some of the comments, the behavior of "which" can be inconsistent even between two systems of the same distribution depending on what shell you are using.