The original article you linked was not about Pango or Gnome and did not mention those things at all other than a vague reference to a different bug which may or may not even be related. As far as I can tell no developers have done a full (and time-consuming) investigation of this issue to actually get a full picture of what is going on. I would encourage you to actually read the articles you link and their primary sources, because what you're saying is somewhat contrary to what has already been said. Repeatedly airing grievances about decisions that have already been made years ago is, in general, not helpful to you or anyone else.
The user pushback was unnecessary because this is a deeper technical issue than just these fonts. Additionally bitmap fonts are still usable as long as they are appropriately converted to OpenType.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to disagree / take issue with- I thought it was the point about Gnome developers and their heads for which I gave plenty of backing information - there was no technical reason not to continue to use Freetype hinting until Harfbuzz supported it or give distros option to choose. But instead in both cases they just said screw your users who need that. Nothing you have said so far refutes my point that Gnome developers don’t care about their users.
It is not helpful to try and conjecture whether or not upstream "cares about users". There is no reason for me to refute or agree with your point on this matter; if there is some other desktop environment that you prefer to use instead, then my agreeing or disagreeing with you wouldn't change your ability to go use that. I will not join in an angry mob for or against these developers either, that won't help anything get done. I politely request that you avoid trying to make these type of arguments about some other person's motivations in the future, because the only real outcome is to turn people against each other and create enemies, when what you really want seems to be just to get the bug fixed in a friendly way.
Just from looking at the bug report there was a technical reason given related to other bugs and deficiencies in freetype. Please read the bug report in full detail, no developers are deleting features for no reason. Distros always have the option to choose whatever solution they want in response to user complaints. They can stay on an old version of whatever package they want or they can patch Harfbuzz and contribute the patches back upstream. You should take it up with your distro if the problem persists and they've not bothered to do either of these. Either way you have to be prepared to deal with the consequences which are: missing out on other newer features because you stayed on an old version, or spending the time/money to get the work done to add back in the features to the new version. Or you can upgrade anyway and do the workaround which is to convert your fonts.
The user pushback was unnecessary because this is a deeper technical issue than just these fonts. Additionally bitmap fonts are still usable as long as they are appropriately converted to OpenType.