This is a weak way to argue a point. You're basically playing word games with me. I don't see how not changing other people's mod is somehow "changing it to my preferences".
Well maybe if you created mods as opposed to just consuming them you'd have a slighty different opinion. What I think is interesting is your implicit assumption that the recipe database for Minecraft is somehow read-only and once someone puts it there, it's essential that remain untouched. Why is that? It's a shared resource for all mods, isn't it? But let's go further: this is helping.
A modmaker now has a brutal task in game balancing: considering lots of other modpacks. Plus+, Big Dig, FTB, Technic, all these folks include a variety of modpacks and even with the best of intentions balance breaks occur. For example, FTB's modpacks have a few. A simple example in the DW20 modpack: with any ore doubler machine and a Minium stone, you can have infinite blaze rods. Once you have one, you can infinitely clone them limited only by power and minium shard availability. So if someone adding an ore doubler notices this and says, "Hey, EE. I'm here, so ima gonna fix that for you," that is a
service to the user and quite frankly to Pahimar, who has enough on his plate dealing with making an exciting and well written mod.
A great example of this is a discussion I just had with MachineMuse about the expense of her gregtech recipies. Among other things (i.e., misconfigurations in the mod that were propagated by the FTB launcher and bad habits of server maintainers such as myself), Gravisuite introduced a new item that basically blew open the design space for mid-tier flight and crazily enough, everyone seems to agree the result is good and not unbalancing. But now MPS flight looks so expensive that it's not worth the comparative cost since you can keep all the MPS speed by never, ever using the MPS chest, and basically lose nothing. MPS probably needs to compensate for this, but MachineMuses had no way to anticipate this.
In another universe where MPS is much more popular and established, Gravisuite might have offered a config option to turn the cost of the recipes down for MachineMuses. She might have been a bit confused then said, "Oh, I see. Interesting." Maybe she'd be mad, maybe not. Hypotheticals in other people's head are not my forté, I leave that to the mediums. In any case, the user experience would be a lot better and there's a lot to be said for that.
Greg, like or hate him, completely changes the game. He adds a very different pacing and progression to Minecraft and he tries to listen to his users and have his mod adapt to what they're saying. So if lots of people play Mindcrack his mod starts to grow into Mindcrack's headspace and tweak things to preserve the experience he wants. This is a pretty bold plan, when you think about it. But it's also not really KingLemming or CovertJaguar or SirSengir's job to anticipate greg in their mod design, but Greg can react to his users. That is what his mod does.
If you don't like that mod, you can pull it. Everything goes back to normal. No one's IP has been stolen, no one's code has been hacked, no one's feelings should be hurt. Forge deliberately makes this possible because mod interaction is what has to happen these days to make a coherent experience. This is exactly the same stuff that's at play with Forestry and Buildcraft. And Liquid Metals and Universal Electricity. And MineFactory Reloaded and PowerConverters. These things are here because people want them, Forge purposefully enables them, and they are popular and used.
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In fact I hate to use such a cliche, but this really reeks of "whiteknighting".
I feel pretty awesome about starting this meme here since I did a forum search and turned up empty. But protip: the proper formulation is to call them Galahad at the end. Like, "I hate to use the cliché; but slow your roll, Galahad."