it is about the the cloud of incompetence and/or fraud.
A lot of coins mined in the beginning because the dev made a mistake in reward calculations and some people doubting whether it was intentional or not must still be better than having no doubt at all that a coin was started by scammers intending and partially succeeding to scam people, like monero was, correct?
It certainly would be if the scammers were still involved. That's why they're not.
I think I said once that if all the original developers and other insiders involved with DRK and the instamine were to leave, it would become much less of an issue. Consider MtGox. Clearly an incompetently and/or fruadulently run operation, one of the worst. But if someone were to take over with new management, there would be no reason not to use it. If Karpeles were still running it...