Controlling gameplay was never the intention and you know it.
May not be the intention, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Intent is less important than impact. And actually by explicitly removing options because they run counter to your vision, you are intentionally restricting gameplay.
No, a lot of it - including FTB packs - is RF and rumor.
I take it you've talked to Jaded/Eyamaz/Watchful/etc? Because the big reason I can see from what I read why they wouldn't include RoC would be the ToU/EULA restrictions. They have plenty of other mods that don't use RF solely and aren't magic mods at least that I noticed. I believe the requirements stated were that it be RF compatible not built on RF. And RoC fits that bill... worse now than it did because you have to progress through the tech tree manually before RF becomes useful, but still compatible after that point.
That config was added long time ago, over a year. At that point, yes, I do expect someone to actually check if things have changed before mouthing off, just like I would expect them to try new versions before complaining about Monster-era bugs.
Would you want to read through your changelogs from a year ago until now just to figure out if something that sounded like it would never happen based upon the author's intent and terms of use? Frankly I tend to be surprised when you add config options like the blast furnace gating. I can rationalize why it makes sense, but your general demeanor and terms make it seem... off somehow.
Also expecting someone to try something they dislike to see if it changed is rather arrogant. Especially when the impetus for that dislike hasn't changed. I don't badmouth current GregTech because I haven't played it, don't look at wikis or that cesspit they call a thread, and just generally stay the <censored> away from that topic; but I still have an opinion, one that I've asked people that ARE fans of his work (much as that baffles me). The reasons I didn't like the mod are still there. Greg only fixes the bare minimum required to stay technically above-board (I don't modify any other mods! Except Forestry, for an exploit HE enabled with his machines)
GregTech is on my PERMANENT ban list. Now IC2 is as well because Greg is on the team. I'm not going to wade through changelogs to find out that Greg recently added a new Gregorite Fusion Cauldron powered by Dragon Eggs or whatever newfangled whizbang. I don't need to. Greg hasn't changed based on obvious evidence that is even backed up by his supporters.
You aren't Greg, but nobody USED that gating config for the longest time until Keybounce requested more materials and now it's actually got some neat options and is getting a bit of use, but with your historical reaction to requests that seem reasonable to other people but aren't to you, can you honestly blame the guy for not realizing you'd actually let someone modify your game in a way that minetweaker would usually be used to do via config? You are literally the only mod author I know that would do that.
If you can, then I would honestly suggest taking a look at your assumptions about people, because they don't match the reality very well. Don't use yourself, me, padfoote, pyure, 1m industries, demosthenesx, or synfulchaot as examples for the common user. All the highly participating users, mod/pack devs, and admins? We're not typical. We spend an absurd amount of time invested into this community, more time (by an order of magnitude or more) than anyone could expect someone to spend on this hobby when expressing their opinion (which really is a safe opinion to have about you Reika. I wouldn't believe the blast furnace gate config if I hadn't seen it in the code and config files. Really)