Unfortunately, I'm not sure if there's any more polite way for Russ to say that he still thinks he's right. He's gone into enormous detail about how he's closely studied what other people have done and still thinks he's right. When that's the bottom-line message, I don't see how to get it across without it seeming irksome to people who see him as an authority figure to be resisted?

A project's leaders are always going to opinions about how things should work, and they can do a lot to listen better and understand other people's concerns, but they're still not going to choose somebody else's solution if they're not actually convinced it's better. Choosing the solution you think is actually worse on an important issue like this is basically a recipe for self-sabotage.

I think oftentimes people have unrealistic expectations of how open source software works. It's not a democracy. There's no way to win without actually convincing the project owners that your way is better.