I actually interpreted the situation in the opposite way. By changing the rules, people exploited JonnyBitcoin because he was the only one that was correctly following the rules. When some didn't like that he was following the well publicized rules to which everyone agreed, they changed the rules to favor themselves. It sounds like those that changed the rules exploited the system.
Absolutely not.
The committee's posts are pretty clear about what the situation and the reasons for temp disabling the function were.
Your interpretation does not really make sense. People exploited JohnnyBitcoin, really!? How so? Did JohnnyBitcoin lose anything?
Please do not turn around facts.
You are free to not believe in what the committee have done, for whatever strange reason you could have. But twist facts like this is really unbelievable.
I have no problems with the committee stepping in to slow things down until they are better understood in this case. I just want you to be aware of how this is perceived by non-bitshares experts (outsiders). The committee can post all they want, and have noble goals, but in the end they have to realize they are weighing pros and cons. Very few decisions don't benefit one group and hurt another. I'd like to see the committee acknowledge that they were aware of the consequences but thought they were justified.
The facts point to JonnyBitcoin being exploited. In the end, exploiting him is probably worth it as his loss was minimal to ensure everyone was on the same page and feeds were made more accurate, but nonetheless something that should be taken seriously.
Facts:
1) The BitShares blockchain was working perfectly as designed. There was no flaw in the blockchain/DEX.
2) JonnyBitcoin was using the system perfectly as designed and profiting from performing an important network roll (supply control arbitrage)
3) Due to a misunderstanding of how the system works, what price feeds do, and how price feeds should be reported, some thought there was a flaw in the system.
4) The system was changed temporarily so people could figure out how they should have been behaving all along, but weren't because of a misunderstanding.
How JonnyBitcoin got hurt:
He was going long on assets he thought were overvalued so that he could settle them for a profit. By turning off forced settling, he and other settlers were stuck with things they already knew were overvalued. In the time it took for settling to be turned back on, the market had already corrected itself and Jonny lost the profit he would have made along with losing value in assets he didn't want to begin with.
Companies have gotten sued for less.
The committee made the decision to hurt one person (or a few people) in exchange for slowing down that system so larger, more important, organizations could readjust and feed scripts could be fixed. As we're starting off, that's probably the right decision - but it should not be taken lightly.
EDIT:
The market was working with an inaccurate feed.
The settlement function relies on an accurate feed to determine the price of the settle.
So, there was indeed something not working as it should.
Feeds are absolute, there is no such thing as an inaccurate feed. All business models and decisions must be based on the feed. Some community members did not like the source of data for the feeds, or how they were calculated. The "accuracy" of the feed must be priced into the value of bitshares. Inaccurate feeds do not mean the system is not working, it just means you need more tolerance for error and thus decreases the value of the system. Increasing accuracy was great, and increased the value of the feeds themselves, but does not mean the system was not working when the feeds were inacuate.