You don't challenge them by pretending they don't exist. That only make you look like an asshole. The proper way here would have been two pull requests, one wi

You don't challenge them by pretending they don't exist. That only make you look like an asshole. The proper way here would have been two pull requests, one with all the bugfixes, and one with the new feature with a cover letter motivating why an exception should happen. And if this happens often enough with sufficiently good backing motivations, then he may be able to convince people.