To the best of my understanding, back then Luke was working to try to restrain OP_RETURN data blobs with the (still active) spam filter we all know and love (max 80 bytes).

This is basically what `datacarriersize` is.

Here are the revelant Pull Requests:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3715
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5077

oomahq

bitcoin

AJ Towns censoring on Delving Bitcoin to cover Bitcoin Core backdoors ?

theariard

>Luke is also the developer who originally contributed the datacarrier and datacarriersize config options to Bitcoin Core back in 2014

Interesting, if he was planning on doing something akin to inscriptions back then, and was trying to keep the door open for them at the time. Perhaps even while convincing the devs to ACK based on their understanding the change in the way that it is now defined. 

So, is it that devs are manipulating things now, or is it that Luke was manipulating things back then? 