Releasing an update that breaks core functionality would never pass muster in the business world. The only reason given was to keep nodes from dropping off. We really don't need people running nodes on their raspberry pi's and that is certainly not a reason to release such an impactful change. I have a feeling I may just be one of the first to hit the real world problems of this change because I have thousands of customers who complain when transactions don't go through. These problems were predictable but there is no way for the average user to prevent them. I only criticize because I want to see bitcoin become successful and I think this will be a major snafu. Much more serious then just low powered nodes dropping off.
Again, this is a temporary measure, not a permanent. You can increase the fees of your transactions to get them to propagate and confirm, that's the easy and obvious solution.
The permanent solution is being prepared for the 0.12 release, which is planned for february.
Also, you can still keep your fees if you identify a number of nodes that will relay your transaction and connect to those nodes so that your transaction gets relayed. If you can find miner's nodes, that is better since it will send them directly to the miners.