ASK PERMISSION, NOT FORGIVENESS.

I'm not sure why this is hard. You go to the themes teams and ask them to review the rules. I'm sure there would have been a solution and a greater outcome would have come from it. One we could all use. However, this seems like it was done as a "WORK AROUND". That's total BS by all parties.

""In at least once instance, the theme ---> automatically updated a database option <--- for the Monster Insights plugin to add an affiliate ID — automatically updating any database option without user action is generally not allowed.""

I remain that this is an OPT-IN rights issues. Nothing about this seem right because of the way it's handled. And offering to clean up your mistake AFTER the fact is a PR move, and frankly, a lazy one at best.