True, but i don’t see the problem here. The way things are defined at the definition site are always relevant. See for example the whole infix discussion. I agree that a solution that works without being dependant on the definition site is attractive, but it depends on the price that it comes with. There is always some catch, so choosing what is “better” is a matter of opinion.
Reading through all the posts in this thread, I see a lot of resistance for a leading dot. Yes, other languages may have this too, but these are other languages, so the language construct may induce a different feeling. For Scala it does not feel good. Allowing changes at definition site it just one way to solve this, as I also tried to put forward. There are others as well.
Now i am just an other Scala user, not even an expert, so what gives. In the end, the number of people that use our language will show if we made the right choices overall.