I don't think it contradicts the OP. OP says the system is unreliable. Memory leaks that lead to out of memory failures for example. Smart pointers would stabilize things. (Also note that OP says their smart pointers PR was rejected).

That's a generalized statement. Smart pointers can stabilize things, if used wrongly they can cause just as many issues. Sprinkling in smart pointers such that there is now mixed use with smart and raw pointers can cause double frees, and huge maintenance issues. So, creating a single PR to introduce smart pointers in my opinion is not necessarily "stability". He should have created an architecture plan and got upstream and downstream aligned.

Completely agree on alignment. Without it, it's a shortcut to rejection. I actually wrote a lot about this in a blog post I called "Minimum Reviewable Unit" https://gieseanw.wordpress.com/2025/03/21/minimum-reviewable...