NoScript has for a long time automatically changed the users default choice from: "block all Google Ads" to "block all Google Ads except NoScript ones". And, the feeling I get from that blog post is that the NoScript author still considers that program behavior acceptable. For this reason, the conflict was probably not avoidable.

So, while it was a good apology, I am not sure that the author has learned the entire lesson. Never-the-less, it is a mistake made and a mistake fixed, and the author is probably a better developer for it.